Union Strategy Research Group (USRG)

Faced with fundamental transformations in the nature of work, the employment relationship and the strategies of governments and employers, unions are being forced to reinvent themselves. In Australia, as elsewhere, union leaders, labour activists and academic researchers are seeking to understand and mould the future of the union movement and its relationship with other social forces and communities. The USRG provides local and international studies of these questions and encourages studies of changes in employee representation, collective bargaining and labour organisation, strategy and ideology.

Annual Lecture, 2009 - ‘Legal Strategies for Trade Union Recovery: Lessons from Three Continents’

  • Speaker: Professor Keith Ewing, Kings College, London.
  • Date & Time: Thursday 5 November 2009: 5:30pm - 7:00pm
  • Venue: Darlington Centre, University of Sydney (City Road)
  • RSVP essential (space is limited) Bradon Ellem 02 9351 6435 b.ellem@econ.usyd.edu.au by Friday 30 October
  • Download Lecture (PDF)

Keith Ewing has been Professor of Public Law at King’s College, University of London since 1989. He is the President of the Institute of Employment Rights (a trade union funded think tank), and Vice-President of the International Centre of Trade Union Rights. He is an active adviser to the TUC and TULO (the organisation of Labour Party affiliated trade unions). Professor Ewing’s most recent book, The Bonfire of the Liberties, is to be published by Oxford University Press in February 2010. In addition to his work with Rae Cooper and Bradon Ellem on collective bargaining, he is preparing a collection of essays entitled Rights Left Behind which examines the failure of British governments to give effect to the UK’s international obligations relating to the right to organise, the right to bargain and the right to strike.


Previous Seminar - ‘Supply Side Industrial Relations and the Trade Union Learning Agenda in Britain’

  • Speaker: Professor Mark Stuart, Director - Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, University of Leeds.
  • Date & Time: Monday 12 October, 2.00pm - 3.30pm
  • Venue: Room 214/215, H69 - Economics Building

Mark Stuart is Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations and Director of the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change at the University of Leeds. His research interests include: the modernisation of employment relations; economic restructuring and adjustment; the political economy of skill formation; and the renewal of trade unions. He had led over 20 externally funded research projects, including a European Union Framework Programme project on the restructuring of the steel and metal sectors, and published over 90 books, articles, chapters and reports. He is an Associate Fellow of the ESRC Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organizational Performance (at Oxford and Cardiff Universities), a Visiting Professor at Toulouse Business School and the Chair of the International Section of the Labor and Employment Relations Association.


Previous Lecture - ‘American Labor Law as a Model for Australia? Or, Can You Get Here From There?’

Presenter: Professor David Brody (UC Berkeley)