Reframing Approaches to Workplace Violence Towards Pacific Homecare Workers in New Zealand and Australia

Date
2024-08-25
Authors
Ofe-Grant, Betty
Ravenswood, Katherine
Macdonald, Fiona
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Abstract

In Australia and New Zealand there is an emerging focus on the problems of violence and harassment for the large, feminised workforces of care and support workers in homecare settings. However, much of this research does not consider the power dynamics of workplaces and socio-political influences that impact how workers are supported when facing WPV. This is of particular concern in relation to the growing proportion of Pacific workers in Australia and New Zealand, many of whom have temporary migrant status. Using a narrative review method, we find that extant research largely fails to address the experiences of Pacific homecare workers, and that this, and the lack of attention to Pacific workers in practice, is informed by racist norms and attitudes based on historic and current labour market and migration policies. Drawing on socio-ecological models of workplace violence (WPV), we propose a research and policy analytical framework of WPV that centres Pacific voices and culture to better mitigate and prevent Pacific homecare workers’ experiences of WPV.

Description
Keywords
1402 Applied Economics , 1503 Business and Management , 1801 Law , Industrial Relations , 3505 Human resources and industrial relations , 4801 Commercial law
Source
Journal of Industrial Relations, The, ISSN: 0022-1856 (Print); 1472-9296 (Online), SAGE Publications. doi: 10.1177/00221856241270989
Rights statement
© Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA) 2024 SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).