Report on Vulnerable Workers in Victoria
In June 2021, RMIT’s CPOW together with the Business and Human Rights Centre, jointly released a report that brought home the urgency of law reform and support for vulnerable workers.
Research Theme
Work of Social Care
Paid care work is a major area of employment growth and a key site of change affecting the future of work globally. How care work is funded, organised and rewarded is critical to the well-being of millions of workers, overwhelmingly women, worldwide. The Work of Social Care research theme focuses on the organisation and regulation of social care work. It is centrally concerned with the quality of paid care work, including aged care, disability support and childcare, and with addressing gender inequality in work. Research in this theme directly supports RMIT’s contribution to the UN ‘Decent Work and Economic Growth’ and ‘Gender Equality’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Theme Leader
Dr Fiona Macdonald is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow in the School of Management. Fiona’s research focuses on three interconnected themes: the changing nature of work and employment relationships; regulating for decent work and gender equality; and the political economy of work. The empirical focus of Fiona’s current research on the social care workforce also brings in her long-standing interest in social policy and welfare systems.
In 2016 Fiona was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award to examine the workforce challenges of Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Her research has strong policy relevance, and she works closely with industry as well as with national and international networks of employment and care scholars. In 2017, she received the RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research impact – Early Career Researcher. Fiona is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the recently established International Journal of Care and Caring.
Researchers
Jenny Malone
Current Projects
Report: Scoping Study on Gender-Based Violence in Individualised Support & Care Services in Victoria
Sara Charlesworth, Fiona Macdonald and Jane Clarke, are undertaking this scoping project for Worksafe Victoria.
Imagining Age-Friendly “Communities within Communities”: International Promising Practices
Sara Charlesworth is an investigator on this Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded project.
Decent Work Good Care: International approaches to aged care
This project explores the links between job quality and care quality in the context of formal aged care provision in the distinct liberal welfare states
Unacceptable Forms of Work: Gender-Based Violence
The research focuses on gender-based violence in home care as an ‘unacceptable form of work’ and locates it with home care work conditions.
Past Projects
A day in the life of a care and support worker
This project used time diaries to investigate the working time of disability support workers providing home and community support.
Precarity and Job Instability on the Frontlines of NDIS Support Work
The research identified multiple problems negatively affecting the stability, quality and sustainability of disability support workers’ jobs.
Where Secure Employment Meets Client Needs
Greenacres Disability Services &
Workforce Innovation Project undertaken by Fiona Macdonald and colleagues.
Work, care, retirement and health: Ageing agendas
Work, care, retirement and health: Ageing agendas The project examines the health and equality consequences of population ageing, labour market inequalities and the gendering of
Quality Care and Quality Jobs
Quality Care and Quality Jobs Improving work practices to deliver quality aged care jobs and aged care services for older Australians. Project dates: 2013-2016 (CI
Prospects for Decent Work and Gender Equality in Frontline Care Work
Prospects for Decent Work and Gender Equality in Frontline Care Work This project critically examines regulatory strategies to improve the quality of jobs held by
Paid work in cash-for-care: Australia in comparative perspective
This project is investigating the outcomes of cash-for-care reforms for care workers.
Informal Care, Social Protection and Gender: Policy Implications for Countries in the WHO Western Pacific Region
A scoping review on informal care, social protection and gender is drawing out policy implications for countries in the Western Pacific Region. Grant: WHO Western
Publications
A day in the life of a care and support worker
This project used time diaries to investigate the working time of disability support workers providing home and community support.
Expanding gender inequalities in work
Fiona Macdonald 12 August 2020 COVID-19 has dramatically exposed gender inequalities in paid and unpaid work, highlighting the ongoing undervaluing of work performed by women
Insecurity for disability support workers amidst COVID-19
Raelene West 12 August 2020 In the face of COVID-19, disability support workers, like aged care workers, are confronted daily with the risks of contracting
Where Secure Employment Meets Client Needs
Greenacres Disability Services &
Workforce Innovation Project undertaken by Fiona Macdonald and colleagues.
On-Demand Work in Australia
Publications Campbell, I, Macdonald, F and Charlesworth S (2019) ‘On-Demand Work in Australia’ in O’Sullivan, M., Lavelle, J., McMahon, J., Ryan, L., Murphy, C., Turner,