Development of the Australian Government’s Workplace Domestic Violence Policy 2008–2018

Abstract

This thesis investigates how and why workplace domestic violence policy was developed in Australia from 2008 to 2018. It examines workplace domestic violence policy as a type of workplace equality and gender equality policy. It analyses the extent to which traditional actors, such as unions, employer parties and components of the state, and non-traditional actors, including anti-domestic violence advocates and union members, influenced this policy development. The thesis addresses several under-researched areas in industrial relations scholarship. First, few studies have addressed the development of workplace domestic violence policy in Australia and how and why it arose. Second, the contribution of non-traditional actors to industrial relations policy change has been neglected and under-theorised. Third, in industrial relations scholarship there have been few attempts to conceptualise changes in workplace gender equality policy and how and why it occurs. The thesis addresses these gaps through an analytical framework comprising of systematic process analysis, analysis of traditional and non-traditional actors, and the theoretical lens of Baird’s (2004, 2006, 2016) typology of orientations. The thesis collected data from interviews carried out with 43 traditional and non-traditional actors involved in workplace domestic violence policy development in Australia from 2008 to 2018. Interview data were supplemented by documentary analysis from a range of organisational sources. The thesis finds that anti-domestic violence advocates and researchers discovered that welfare and business policy orientation framings were ineffective in addressing the cost of domestic violence to people experiencing it. This discovery led these non-traditional actors to convince union, employer and state actors to develop bargaining (through collective bargaining) and workplace entitlements and legislation orientations towards domestic violence policy. Further, the thesis finds that unions quickly became strong advocates and drivers of workplace domestic violence policy and entitlements with particular success in the public sector. Overall, employer parties preferred employers to remain unregulated by the state in domestic violence policy. The thesis concludes that actors such as anti-domestic violence advocates, researchers and unions with a strong social equity orientation towards workplace domestic violence policy, informed by feminism, were able to shift the conservative Australian Government’s overtly business orientation on workplace domestic violence policy towards a social equity orientation. This led to five days of unpaid domestic violence leave in Australia’s National Employment Standards in 2018. The thesis’ conclusions on non-traditional actors and Baird’s (2004, 2006, 2016) typology of orientations provide a substantive theory for how and why workplace domestic violence policy developed in Australia from 2008 to 2018. The thesis expands the types of “principal agency” identified in Baird (e.g., 2004, p. 269) to include non-traditional actors and their specific type. It makes a theoretical contribution by explaining the process through which non-traditional actors influenced traditional actors to engage in orientations towards workplace domestic violence policy likely to lead to social equity outcomes for employees experiencing domestic violence. The thesis calls these new dimensions of causality causes of actor orientation and orientation change. The thesis’ findings contribute to an understanding of the interrelationship needed between policy orientation, mechanism and actor to advance workplace gender equality.