Non-standard working-time arrangements in Australia and New Zealand

In the post-Second World War period, working and social life has been organised around the concept of a standard day and week with premium payments for work undertaken during unsocial hours. In recent years, this standard model for organising working-time has been placed under pressure from a range of supply- and demand-side factors. Greater female and student participation in the labour force has led to a fragmentation of working-time preferences on the supply side. Employers, on the demand side, have also sought to dismember the standard working-time model to eliminate premium payments for unsocial work and to achieve greater control and flexibility in the allocation of non-standard working hours. Employer demand for this type of labour flexibility has been one of the central rationales for the decentralisation of industrial relations systems in Australia and New Zealand. This paper seeks to assess whether employers in the more deregulated New Zealand system have instigated a vastly different non-standard working-time regime from their Australian counterparts. The article concludes that there are only minor differences in the distribution of non-standard working hours in Australia and New Zealand. This finding challenges the notion that the arbitration system is a major impediment to the organisation of working-time. Rather, it appears that production and operational demands are the central imperative in the structuring of working-time within firms.