2022 Volume 35 Issue 3

Abstract

The road transport industry has long experienced high rates of contractor work (by ‘owner-drivers’) and been characterised by low pay, incentives to drive fast and skip breaks, driver fatigue, use of drugs and stimulants, overloading, long working hours, poor safety, and insolvencies. Long hours in the industry are linked to poor general health, severe psychological distress and near-misses. In recent years two models of regulation of road transport have gained attention: the short-lived federal Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) and the long-lived (and still surviving) Chapter 6 of the Industrial Relations Act 1996 (NSW). This article explores the impact of Chapter 6 regulation on road safety in the trucking industry in New South Wales. It outlines the industry’s safety problem and its brief experience with the RSRT; discusses the theoretical considerations relevant to the regulation of pay in the road transport industry; examines the history leading up to the introduction of Chapter 6; and discusses how the NSW Industrial Relations Commission regulates minimum standards and plays other roles in the industry such as conciliation and dispute resolution. Most importantly, it investigates the impact of Chapter 6 regulation, in particular on safety, through quantitative analysis of road fatality statistics over three decades. It concludes with consideration of the theoretical implications of these experiments for the concept of ‘directed devolution’, and the potential practical implications for the regulation of the platform or ‘gig’ economy for independent courier drivers and riders. In concluding, it also touches on the question as to why the Chapter 6 and RSRT models differed so much in their longevity.

Abstract

The term ‘exploitation’ is routinely used to describe the mistreatment and abuse of temporary migrant workers in Australia, yet there has been little theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘exploitation’ and what it means in this context. It is rarely defined and most often used to describe conduct that is already unlawful, and thus prima facie wrongful. Why then, do we use the term ‘exploitation’, beyond its rhetorical heft? This article argues that there is a need to use the term with greater precision — to examine what, exactly, is exploitative about the treatment of these workers. It focuses on the concepts of ‘structural’ and ‘transactional’ exploitation, explains how these concepts may be interlinked, and argues that the exploitation of temporary migrant workers in Australia may be both transactional and structural in nature. The article also suggests how the distinction between transactional and structural exploitation provides important conceptual tools for analysing, with more precision, how temporary migrant workers are exploited in Australia — as well as, importantly, the tools to examine responses to the problem of exploitation.