Since early 2006, the federal labour inspectorate, now known as the Fair Work Ombudsman ('FWO'), has been both active and innovative in promoting and enforcing employment standards. While various enforcement tools are available to the FWO, civil remedy litigation has been an especially visible...

The importance of accountability has long been sheeted home to the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO), the federal statutory agency responsible for enforcement of minimum employment standards under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). In the immediate aftermath of Work Choices, the activities of...

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (‘ACCC’) is on the cusp of introducing a class exemption for collective bargaining for small businesses. This development is not just novel in the context of Australian competition law, it is important in terms of addressing entrenched...

This paper explores the interaction of Better Work Indonesia (BWI) with the public labour inspectorate in that country. We consider the programmes and mechanisms of interaction, and also how Better Work's contributions are implemented. We present here the preliminary findings of our field work,...

This chapter begins by exploring the available evidence on the extent to which Australian workplaces have become fissured. This chapter then provides an overview of the central statutory responses in the respective regulatory spheres of labor, work health and safety, and competition and consumer...

While there is a burgeoning body of scholarship concerned with the ways in which regulators seek to detect and recover underpayments on behalf of aggrieved workers, there has been considerably less academic consideration of how these same agencies enforce anti-strike provisions against trade...

When the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) was first introduced, compliance issues were viewed as somewhat trifling and the enforcement framework generated very little discussion, let alone debate. Early reviews of the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) generally reached positive conclusions about...

This chapter examines the potential of government procurement as a mechanism for improving job quality and alleviating poverty and proposes ways in which these mechanisms can be strengthened so as to make them more effective. The promotion of higher labour standards through government...