Employment, flexibility and labour market practices of domestic and MNC chain luxury hotels in Australia: Where has accountability gone?

Abstract

This study investigates employment and labour market practices based on observations derived from a two-phased empirical study that has yielded quantitative and qualitative sets of empirical data from luxury 4-5 star luxury domestic and multinational corporation (MNCs) hotels located in Australia's Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor. The research had two phases: a quantitative phase comprised an employee relations survey that sought data on operational employee and management demographics, wage levels, gender, skill formation and working conditions; and a qualitative phase involved interviewing 14 hotel human resource managers. The survey data highlights a persistence of gendered, low waged and segmented labour markets dominated by flexible forms of labour suggesting that HR accountability structures in hotels remain weak. This is despite an apparent growth in employee educational levels and hotel training activity suggesting the possibility at least of growing professionalism. It is noted that in this labour market, which we find is dominated by a ready supply of labour with low levels of union activity, increasing human capital levels have not translated into upward pressure on employee and managerial wages. This deficiency is likely to inhibit efforts to improve the delivery of HRM practices that in turn suggest that neither MNC nor domestic hotels have the types of labour market pressures that engender secure, long term and high commitment employment policies that are more conducive to HRM innovation.