Suchergebnisse

Amidst declining union influence, teacher unions have retained power. However, work intensification, arising from increasing reform in school education, has potentially undermined union participation, particularly women's. Using a mixed-method approach, this article examines how the tangled combination of women's paid work, union participation and family/domestic responsibilities (the 'triple burden') affects women's roles as unionists. Examining the case of Australian teachers, the article finds that while demands of 'work' and 'life' can stifle union participation, it is specifically the cultural and historical legacies in unions that hinder women's participation. The findings offer new insights around issues affecting the participation of women in female-dominated unions, and the intersection between union organisation and operation and the member-workers whom they represent.

Abstract
Intra-professional collaboration is essential as it enables professionals to learn, develop, and define the terms of the profession in their own way. Yet conditions for collaboration are shaped by how work is organized and governed. This article examines how conditions for intra-professional collaboration, where work takes place with colleagues within the same profession in same or similar roles, are perceived by teachers, in relation to how work is organized, by drawing on empirical insights from a study on teachers working in education systems defined by market-driven reforms. Our findings nuance ideas of professional connectedness by showing how the organization of work, affected by 'entangled institutional logics' (Blomgren and Waks 2015; Alvehus and Andersson 2018) and market-based governance reforms, shapes intra-professional collaboration. Our contribution is thus to take departure from established understandings of connectivity, that is, 'related to others and outsiders' (Noordegraaf 2020) by examining connectivity within professions, showing how there continues to be a struggle between the profession, organization, and market which shapes conditions for intra-professional work within the teaching profession. Our analysis of intra-professional collaboration holds significance for emergent understandings of connectivity (see Adams et al. 2020a; Alvehus, Avoon and Oliver 2021: 201; Kanon and Andersson 2023) by underscoring how the contemporary organization and management of work shape the conditions that enable, or augment, inwards connectivity and the ability for professionals to collaborate in meaningful ways.

Parliament of Australia website. Together, over the last five years, through a series of research projects, the above colleagues at the University of Sydney, Curtin University, University of New South Wales (Australia) and the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden), have examined the issues of work, workload, and conditions of work of Australian school teachers and school leaders, drawing international comparison to Sweden and elsewhere. We have reported (in conjunction with the NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF), and State School Teachers Union of Western Australia (SSTUWA)) on the largest, recent survey of teachers' work and workplace conditions in the country through input and extensive responses from over 20,000 teachers and school leaders. We welcome this Parliamentary Inquiry as both timely and of great importance.