‘period problems’ at the coalface

Menstruation leave for women workers brings into the public domain of mining ongoing debates around protective legislation for women. It brings into focus the presumed tensions between gender equity and gender difference with regard to women's economic citizenship. Large-scale mining in East Kalimantan in Indonesia has offered some opportunities to poor and unskilled rural women to find formal jobs in the mines as truck and heavy equipment operators. This paper presents a case study of women in mining occupations, considers the implications of current menstruation leave provisions on the employment of women in the mines and raises serious issues related to gender equity in the workplace. The involvement of women in a non-conventional workplace such as the mine pits, providing a novel site for contestation over the rights of women workers, illuminates a less-debated area in feminist studies, especially in view of the significant ongoing changes in the Indonesian framework for industrial relations.     

Doctrine and Decision: Navigating Labour's New Constitutional Position in the Lords

The 2015–17 Parliament was the first time in history that the Conservatives were in government with no easily assembled majority in the House of Lords. This has fundamentally altered the role that Labour is able to play in the Lords and, conversely, that peers are able to play in the Labour party. Yet the political significance of this situation has not yet been fully appreciated by a party which remains culturally antagonistic and constitutionally wary of the Lords. In this paper, we draw on interviews with Labour peers, particularly the late Baroness Hollis of Heigham, who have been able to use the essentially conservative powers of the Lords for social democratic ends. We suggest that the Labour party needs to incorporate the second chamber into both its practical and symbolic politics, and to find ways to use this new source of constitutional power without accommodating to it.     

Disability and support relationships: What role does policy play?

Very little is known about how relationships between people with disabilities and their paid support workers are positioned in policy. With the policy shift toward choice of provider, individualised approaches, person centredness and self‐directed funding, the nature of their relationship assumes a more prominent role in the quality of support practice. The policy analysis in this article explores the extent to which current disability policy acknowledges, promotes, or diminishes the relationships between people with disabilities and workers, in their organisational context. It uses Honneth's conditions for recognition—love (cared for), rights (respected) and solidarity or social esteem (valued)—to understand how policy positions mutuality in the relationship. The policy review applied a three‐stage process: categorisation of policies, textual analysis and content analysis to policy documents at four levels—international, Australian federal, state and organisational in two case studies. The analysis revealed that while a rights framework is explicit in most policies, the emphases on the conditions for recognition within a relationship between people with disabilities and workers are compromised in instructional policies that attempt to manage the tension between choice and risk, particularly at the organisational level.