At the 2025 annual conference of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ), the editors of the New Zealand Journal of Employment – Dr Felicity Lamm and Dr Erling Rasmussen - both received the Vic Taylor Long Term Contribution Award 2024. This prestigious award has had many well-known Australian and New Zealand recipients (see AIRAANZ Award, 2023).

During the presentation speeches, the academic achievements of Dr Lamm and Dr Rasmussen were outlined (see the brief overviews below). However, their contributions as editors of the NZJER and as authors of the New Zealand Employment Relations textbook were singled out as crucial achievements. They have been editors of the NZJER since 2004 and their textbook writing started in the late 1990s. In particular, the move towards genuine Open Access of the NZJER and textbooks were lauded as a way of opening academic research to practitioners and other interested parties (a discussion of the journey towards Open Access, see Rasmussen, Lamm & Molineaux, 2022).

The 2025 Association of Industrial Relations Academics in Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) conference is being held in Wellington New Zealand from 3-5 February, with the theme "Navigating the Nexus: Politics, Profession, and Practice in Industrial Relations".

Earlybird registrations are open until 6 December. The conference website is here: https://www.airaanz.org/conference/airaanz-conference-2025 

Otago University will host the 5^th Human Resources International Conference (HRIC) in 2024, from Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 January 2024.

The year 2023 will mark a significant milestone, with the 50^th anniversary of what have become the personal grievance provisions in Aotearoa New Zealand. This mirrors similar anniversaries in other parts of the world. To mark this, NZJER will have a Special Issue on this topic and invites authors to submit abstracts.

The Issue will cover the changes that have occurred over that time, as well as exploring the current situation. The scope of potential topics is wide. Giving examples can be problematic as they are never an exhaustive list, but some starters could include

·       an HR perspective on how PG rights have impacted on day-today People-and-Employment (HR) practice

·       the changing roles of advocates and unions

·       access to justice and the difficulties/costs of moving beyond mediation as well as the adequacy of remedies

·       the consequences of publicly reporting employment cases and proposed need for name suppression, in a digital age

·       the interface between tikanga and current employment law

Abstracts should be 600 words in length and submitted through the NZJER portal.

The Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) is pleased to announce a return to in-person conferences. The AIRAANZ 2023 Conference will be hosted by the College of Business, Law and Governance, James Cook University at Magnetic Island, North Queensland, Australia from Wednesday 8 to Friday 10 February 2023.

The conference this year will be in-person. 

The AIRAANZ 2023 Conference will be hosted by the College of Business, Law and Governance, James Cook University at Peppers on Blue Resort, Magnetic Island, North Queensland, Australia.

For more details: https://www.airaanz.org/conference/airaanz-conference-2023

Submissions for a special issue of the NZJER to be published in 2022 are welcomed from authors who are researching in the area of global labour mobility.   Areas that are of particular interest are the working experiences of migrant labour, changing labour force demographics and the changing nature of work. We also encourage authors to have a strong New Zealand focus in their research.