About Us

The Workplace Research Centre (WRC) is one of Australia's leading research organisations on work and employment.

Research

Over 22 years we have successfully completed on-time and on-budget, over 100 major contract research projects and multiple smaller scale studies.

Conferences & Advocacy Training

Our programs have a deserved reputation for quality, value-for-money and practical relevance.

Latest News

• Australia at Work Five Year Study 2007- 2011 12 Jan 2012

  In 2007 the Workplace Research Centre began the Australia at Work project - a major ARC-funded longitudinal study of Australian workers. Since the project commenced in 2007, the Australia at Work project team has sought to understand the nature of employment in this country, and how it is changing over time. Below is a link to a number of factsheets reporting on key themes from the study. This includes factsheets on topics including hours of work, working time preferences, employee attitudes to their managers, the gender pay gap, incidence of job change, and factors influencing employee perceptions of risk of workplace injury or illness.

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• The relationship between payment systems, work intensification and health and safety outcomes: a study of hotel room attendants 11 Jan 2012

  This publication was produced by Sarah Oxenbridge and Maja Moensted as part of the LHMU/WorkCover Assist Funded Research Project into Australian Room Attendants.

  This paper examines the impact of payment systems on workers' exposure to body-stressing injuries. Data are drawn from interviews with managers and focus groups of room attendants in Australian luxury hotels. We find that the most important factor predicting work-related bodily injury is the payment system. Payment on the basis of the number of rooms cleaned (piece rates) was found to result in task 'speed-up'. The capacity to earn a living wage was therefore reliant on work intensification, leading to the use of unsafe working methods and injury. By contrast, attendants paid an hourly wage worked at a slower pace, earned a living wage and sustained fewer, if any, injuries. Mediating factors include the shift towards the contracting-out of housekeeping services to labour hire agencies, which typically pay on a per room basis, and their preference for employing migrant workers on temporary work visas. The paper concludes by considering regulatory strategies that might be used to reduce the incidence of work-related injuries among room attendants and workers subject to similar modes of employment in other sectors.

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