New national research centre to study work

23 May 2006

New national research centre to study work

Gainful employment is central to most people’s lives. A new AUT University-based research centre will investigate exactly what our working culture means for New Zealand.

The Centre for Work and Labour Market Studies (CWaLMS) will lead New Zealand research into analysing the patterns of work during an individual’s lifetime.

This Friday, May 26, Speaker of the House Margaret Wilson will join academics and business leaders to launch the new national centre.

CWaLMS Director Professor of Employment Relations Ray Markey, from the Faculty of Business, believes the centre’s uniquely holistic approach will make it a major global research institute.

Work – paid or unpaid – enables profit and competitive advantage for enterprises and social and economic governance of communities, he says.

“CWaLMS research will focus on the whole picture. It will look at links between parts of a person’s life – from birth to education, training to employment, leaving the workplace for child-rearing and returning, to further education and retirement.

“Public policy and individual decisions concerning each of these stages of a person’s life affects each of the other parts. CWaLMS brings to these issues a multidisciplinary team of AUT researchers with backgrounds in law, economics, employment relations, human resource management, social policy, sociology and labour history,” he says.

Professor Markey is joint editor of the International Employment Relations Review and chair of the International Industrial Relations Association Study Group on Workers' Participation. He is interested in regional and comparative employment relations, employee participation and labour history.

He has been a consultant to the Australian Department of Industrial Relations, the ILO (International Labour Organization) and a number of firms and trade unions in Australia, Britain and the former Yugoslavia.

Professor Markey is the author of six books on industrial relations and labour history, and has edited seven others. He has published more than 80 articles.

ENDS

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