Work is central to people's lives, and industrial relations institutions play a crucial role in shaping how people experience it. This has been especially apparent with changes in workplaces and labour markets over the last generation. The landscape has been remade. Women's participation in the paid workforce has increased substantially. Problems with non-standard work have intensified. Union members as a percentage of the total workforce have declined dramatically. Technological advancements, climate change and increased international competition have profoundly impacted the business environments that employers operate in. Government policies have been transformed as both cause and effect of many of these changes. All these transformations and policy responses pose fundamental questions about what the state should do and about how it weighs up the merits of equity, efficiency and voice at work.

All these developments have produced much discussion about the ‘future of work’ and scrutiny of government policy. In Australia, national elections have been won and lost on industrial relations issues. This book helps readers – including industrial relations and people management scholars, students and practitioners – make sense of the complex debates over the regulation of work. It examines how industrial relations policy is made, the role of governments and other actors including employers, employer associations, workers and trade unions in the policy making process, the origins of current policies, and how the institutions underpinning policy have changed over time.

Climate change is not a problem that the Australian industrial relations framework was designed to solve. In Australia, as in most countries, the regulation of the employment relationship has overwhelmingly been understood as conceptually separate from the task of maintaining a safe and healthy environment. This conceptual split is apparent in nearly every aspect of policy making and law about industrial relations and the environment. The non-human web of life exists as a kind of backdrop to the ‘real’ drama of industrial relations: unremarkable, stable and reliably there to supply what is needed for work and industry to occur. In this respect, it has a similar status to the one bestowed on ‘women's work’ for much of the twentieth century.

The conceptual separation between industrial relations and environmental issues is echoed in industrial relations theory. The environment does not appear in classic pluralist industrial relations theory, such as Dunlop's system model of industrial relations, nor is it explicitly addressed by Befort and Budd's (2009) framework discussed in Chapter 2. However, it is possible to think about environmental concerns in terms of Befort and Budd's productivity, equity and voice framework, as something that is inherently outside the purview of the efficiency objective, which views humans and the natural world as a resource for profit maximization, but as potentially within the domains of equity and voice.

Introduction

Since the 1990s both the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) have contributed to fostering democratic change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by, among others, defining and promoting new forms of education for citizenship (Huddleston, 2005, p 51; Olafsdottir, 2008, p 129). Though both European organizations are constrained in their legal capacity to enforce educational policies at national levels, they rely on informational and, to some extent, financial and organizational tools to influence national policies (Abs, 2021, p 330). As a consequence, educational policies and curricula in European countries increasingly include translations and implementations of supranational European policy initiatives on education for citizenship (Neubauer, 2012, p 82).

Considering that Europeanization has an impact on how citizenship education is conceived and carried out (Keating, 2014), in this chapter I investigate the concepts of citizenship promoted at the European supranational level within their educational documents and materials.1 My methodology consists of a qualitative analysis of teaching materials and implementation reports produced by the Council of Europe and the EU and is complemented by insights from the academic literature.

Given the ideological sensitivity of the concept of citizenship, reaching consensus on the aims and approach of citizenship education is challenging (Veugelers, 2021, p 25). In these supranational approaches, I question whether one model of citizenship imposes itself upon others or if we can detect influences from several models.

Introduction

Raffaella Barker (2014) contemplated what to call her father's former wife – if not stepmother, then what? A similar dilemma was experienced by Sanner (2023), who noted that her father's son, her half-brother, calls her biological mother his stepmother. Gill, one of the stepmothers I interviewed, said: ‘Yeah, yeah. My stepdaughter-in-law or whatever she is. … My cousin looks after her ex-husband's little girl, who's obviously no relation to her but related to her sons so, you know, her sons, two sons, stepsister, no half-sister, sorry.’ What all these stories have in common is that people have complex stepfamilial relationships for which there is no adequate terminology, at least not in English, which renders these relationships invisible or confused with other step/familial designations. And, perhaps more importantly, these stories tell us that naming steprelationships in ways that show their character and also distances them from the wicked stigma is important for stepfamily members – and not necessarily a sign of lack of institutionalization (Allan et al, 2013; Cherlin, 2020). This historical reality has obscured stepfamily members in historical records with the added confusion of various naming traditions in different European countries, denoting distinct conceptualizations and practices of doing and displaying stepfamilies. But the hegemony of the English-speaking countries in research on stepfamilies means that histories, naming, legal practices and experiences from ‘other’ countries are invisibilized. To illustrate this point, one just has to look at The International Handbook of Stepfamilies (Pryor, 2008), which is international insofar as out of 23 chapters, it has three chapters on stepfamilies not in the English-speaking world, that is, Japan, France and Mexico.

Productivity has been a central theme of debates about industrial relations policy in Australia since the 1990s. Most if not all governments who have instituted industrial relations reform during this period have argued that their policies would benefit productivity. These claims have largely been made in response to industrial relations actors, particularly employer associations, inferring a direct, causal relationship between Australia's productivity performance and the regulation of industrial relations, particularly the bargaining system. However, the assumptions underpinning these claims and the evidence supporting them are questionable.

Why has productivity been such a prominent focus of Australian industrial relations policy debates? There is broad consensus among employers, unions and policy makers that productivity gains are a desirable policy objective because such gains provide the foundation for increases in living standards. As the economist Paul Krugman (1997: 11) has argued, ‘productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything’. However, as this chapter shows, there are very different views between the actors – employers and unions, and their political representatives – about how industrial relations policy can improve productivity.

The chapter first outlines the parameters of productivity debates before examining the relationships between efficiency, productivity and industrial relations policy. The impact of industrial relations policy on productivity is not as clear-cut as some actors claim. The chapter then explores the ways in which productivity has often been invoked to justify industrial relations reform in Australia, particularly since the 1990s, and scrutinizes whether these reforms have had their intended productivity impacts.

Introduction

According to Allan and colleagues (2013: 139), ‘kinship rarely involve[s] just two individuals. Rather, particular family relationships are routinely embedded within a wider network of family ties’. In other words, kinship work, or kinwork, is collective intimate practices (Jamieson, 2011, see Chapter 2 in this volume), negotiated duties and obligations which make (or break) a step/family (Finch and Mason, 1993). I begin this chapter by examining invisible kinwork in stepfamilies, focusing on the unacknowledged yet essential role biological or adoptive fathers play in shaping steprelationships, looking specifically at the start of a romantic relationship between them and the stepmother – as understood by stepmothers. By shedding light on these ‘invisible’ contributions, or indeed, their absence, in this chapter, I aim to challenge gendered assumptions and examine the nuanced interactions between stepmothers and biological fathers during the stepfamily formation process. Next, I examine conflict management within stepfamily structures, situating it within the broader context of stepfamily obligations and the contested dynamics between stepmothers and biological fathers arising from differing parenting styles and expectations around authority and discipline – which place them on different planets (Hester, 2011). Finally, I focus on the importance of stepmothers’ biological families, especially parents, in stepfamily in/stability. Stepmothers relied on their biological families as bridges, helping integrate the new stepfamily members, but sometimes their biological families built walls.

The previous chapter examined Australia's work and industrial relations policy legacy. The making of Australia's first national policy established features, such as the award system and a central role for industrial tribunals, that have led to current policy debates and developments. This chapter examines the current framework for regulating work and industrial relations in Australia, the Fair Work Act 2009. It builds on the context provided in Chapter 3 that explained the conditions that gave rise to this legislation. The chapter first examines the Act's main objectives and key features before exploring the reactions of key stakeholders. It then discusses the key policy developments (and at times stasis) in the years following its implementation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. Finally, the chapter examines amendments to the Fair Work Act since 2022 with the ‘Secure Jobs, Better Pay’ and ‘Closing Loopholes’ legislation and their likely implications. Throughout, we emphasize the way policy makers read labour market and workplace problems and existing policies, often framed in terms of efficiency, equity and voice.

The Fair Work Act: key features and policy goals

The Australian Labor Party won the federal election in November 2007, pledging to reverse the Liberal– National Coalition government's WorkChoices legislation. In fulfilling that promise, the Labor government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd implemented the Fair Work Act 2009, which still underpins Australia's policy framework. The stated objectives of this Act were, as the name makes clear, to restore the principle of equity (fairness), and, as the detail suggested, to privilege voice (through good faith bargaining).

Stepmothers in the academic literature are rarely theorized as a bonusmum, as though a stepmother simply is not allowed to claim the category of a mother in any way. Stepmothers seem more likely to be classed and describe themselves as ‘mothering but not mother’, especially as non-residential stepmothers (Weaver and Coleman, 2005) – again, the focus is on their utility, not relation. By far the most present narrative is about the stepmother from fairy tales, and all stepmothers I talked to have referenced her, this being the go-to staple in which our experiences are located and a story we can free ourselves from. Likewise, the stepmother from fairy tales is also the starting point of many academic analyses, including my own, and here, too, we seem to be unable to theorize stepmothers outside of these narratives. Stepmothers are, it would seem, inextricably linked to the wicked stepmother story. To paraphrase Ngozi Adichie (2009), this single story is particularly dangerous because it traps stepmothers within oppressive narratives of how they should behave, failing to account for the complexity and diversity of stepfamily circumstances and dynamics. It is also detrimental to our understanding of how stepmothering is done and can be done differently, and can perpetuate negative ideas about stepmothers, which impacts children's feelings for, and attitudes towards, them, and as the Kamala Harris example shows, this also applies to adults and society at large.

Introduction

Throughout the book, I argue that deeply ingrained gendered expectations around step/family, parenting and womanhood shape the lives of both women and men, reinforced through personal and institutional interactions that order our private and public spheres. To be a woman is to be seen as naturally skilled in emotional labour and kinwork, performing these roles effortlessly out of love and driven by societal expectations to maintain and display a ‘happy step/family’. In this context, conflict within stepfamilies – whether between stepmothers and biological mothers, stepchildren, or the extended stepfamily – signifies a perceived failure and disrupts the established gender order. Another face of this order is our difficulty in envisioning stepmothers and biological or adoptive mothers as friends, as patriarchal structures often place women in competition, epitomized by the trope of ‘who's the fairest of them all?’ Moreover, the interviewed stepmothers recognized the dichotomy of being cast as the ‘other woman’. At the same time, biological or adoptive mothers were framed as the ‘wronged woman’, which added an additional layer of difficulties in managing the wicked stepmother stigma. In this chapter, I explore how stepmothers navigated and challenged these gendered expectations in unorthodox ways. Here, unorthodox refers to two seemingly different approaches to step/family doing and display that transgressed traditional gendered expectations of, first, unreciprocated emotional labour and kinwork, and, second, distant and fraught relationships between stepmothers and biological mothers.

Introduction

In recent years, curriculum has become a fiercely debated issue in the systems of many countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The rise of so-called culture wars, fuelled by a polarized political climate and the rise of identarian populist parties (Sata and Karolewski, 2022; Zimmerman, 2022), has led to intense scrutiny of the role that school programmes play in shaping the values and beliefs of young people. These conflicts are contoured by a new importance attributed to knowledge for the transmission or disruption of political and cultural repertoires in contemporary societies. The social sciences and especially civic education as a field are traditionally concerned by these pressures (Bobbitt, 2019). Views on what civic values and history should be taught in schools have thus become highly polarized (Carretero, 2011; Taylor and Guyver, 2012; Karolewski, 2019). Haste et al (2017) argue that this is due not only to the modalities of populist politics but also to the expansive inherent dynamics of the field of civic education, which has fanned out in plural ways and therefore encompasses much more than preparing young citizens for conventional democratic participation (Haste et al, 2017). Issues of national identity and history, sexual citizenship, immigration, and secularism/religion and the debates that ensue are salient in many civic education systems. Thus, in numerous societies, civic and citizenship education have emerged as a pivotal battleground, seen in the controversial attempts to delineate which national values and historical narratives should be accentuated or de-emphasized when shaping the minds of young citizens (Evans, 2004).

Introduction

The book Rethinking Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe examines how citizenship is practised in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through the lenses of interdisciplinary citizenship studies, scholars from the fields of educational and political science provide insights into how citizenship interacts with political engagement and interrelates with practices of citizenship. The volume adopts a pluralist approach, acknowledging that citizenship can have different connotations depending on the theoretical context, methodological approaches, and specific research interests across the subdisciplines of educational and social sciences.

While the focus on the broader region allows for a comprehensive examination of shared challenges and trends, the decision to limit individual country analyses was intentional, aimed at highlighting overarching patterns and fostering comparative discussions within CEE. However, this choice also opens avenues for future research that could delve deeper into specific national contexts regarding citizenship education and youth citizenship.

This volume expands on prior research, including Treviño et al (2021), to deepen the discussion on citizenship. While that book provides a rich theoretical analysis of youth citizenship across diverse cultures, Rethinking Citizenship extends the discussion specifically within the CEE context, emphasizing unique historical, political, and social dynamics. It situates youth citizenship within local frameworks, allowing for a deeper understanding of how practices differ from those in a more generalized global context.

In the twenty-first century, work and the organization of it have been digitally disrupted due to advances in information communication technology (Schildt, 2017), including the near exponential growth in computing power, smart phones and cloud computing. On-demand digitally enabled ‘gig’ work represents a novel form of work organization (Koutsimpogiorgos et al, 2020), with online labour platforms (Kuhn and Maleki, 2017) digitally intermediating services performed by workers for discrete tasks on an ad-hoc basis. These platforms like to portray themselves as technology companies, in the business of creating online labour markets, rather than as employers, with workers commonly operating as independent contractors (De Stefano, 2016; Prassl, 2017). These changes to work pose fundamental challenges to the reach of state regulation.

The growth of gig work raises important questions for efficiency, equity and voice (Befort and Budd, 2009). From an efficiency perspective, platform technology has significantly reduced transaction costs (Srnicek, 2017). In the past, the type of non-standard work arrangements used by platforms would have been cumbersome and uneconomical, but it has now become feasible, due to technological advancements, to manage large-scale, geographically dispersed workforces that are only marginally attached to the organization (Veen et al, 2020). From an equity perspective, the preference of many platforms to use independent contractor arrangements means that many of these, often relatively vulnerable workers, have more limited opportunities for recourse and redress at work, while competition laws further tend to prevent them from bargaining collectively (Stewart and Stanford, 2017; Hardy and McCrystal, 2022).