Editors' introduction: Australian industrial relations in transition

Wilkinson, Adrian; Bailey, Janis; Mourell, Mark

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2338.2009.00532.x

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We undertake this analysis in the context of the ‘WorkChoices’ reforms, which took effect two months before the data were collected. These reforms are described elsewhere in this issue (Wilkinson et al , 2009), so details are not repeated here. The key element relevant to this analysis is Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), individual contracts that can be inconsistent with award conditions and registered in the federal jurisdiction.…”

Section: Some Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual contracting, collective bargaining and wages in Australia

Peetz

Preston

2009

Industrial Relations Journal

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We examine wages in Australia under federally registered individual contracts and collective agreements (CAs) using unpublished data from a national earnings survey. The distribution of earnings under registered individual contracts was more unequal than under CAs. Average and median earnings under registered individual contracts were lower than under CAs. There was little evidence that individual contracting raised wages through raising productivity. The link between contracting and pay appears contingent, varying between occupations, industries, and firm size bands and dependent upon employees' position in the labour market and employers' use of union avoidance strategies. This has implications for the interpretation of studies of union wage effects.

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Section: Some Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual contracting, collective bargaining and wages in Australia

Peetz

Preston

2009

Industrial Relations Journal

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“…After gaining Senate control at the 2004 election, the Coalition introduced its radical WorkChoices reforms that removed unfair dismissal protections for most workers, allowed employment to be made conditional on workers accepting individual contracts, and removed ‘no disadvantage’ tests that had prevented workers getting paid less than the award (Wilkinson et al . : 365).…”

Section: Industrial Relations Battles: the Politics Of Wage‐earner Wementioning

confidence: 98%

Wage‐Earners' Welfare after Economic Reform: Refurbishing, Retrenching or Hollowing Out Social Protection in Australia and New Zealand?

et al. 2013

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Australia and New Zealand developed distinctive 'wage-earner welfare states', with social protection largely delivered through high breadwinner basic incomes and residual social policies. Market reforms then pursued in both countries during the 1980s and 1990s retrenched important elements of the Antipodean model. Our article offers a novel characterization of major reforms to both welfare states from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. We focus on industrial relations, as a form of wage-earner welfare, and expansions to social provision for families and retirees that may be viewed as responding to the evolving needs of wage-earners as family patterns diversify and populations age. Policy reversals complicate the picture of the long-term path of industrial relations. Voters rejected the Employment Contracts Act in New Zealand in 2000 and WorkChoices in Australia in 2007, with incoming labour governments moderating policy to favour wage-earner expectations of decent wages and fair bargaining. Alongside this, governments expanded both paternalistic social policies and private social provision. We argue these changes taken together produced a 'hollowing out' of wage-earner welfare in both countries, accompanied by increasingly stratified welfare, which marginalizes and stigmatizes many outside the workforce. But, we also note persistent differences, reflecting the more radical and 'pure' New Zealand experiment, its relatively centralized politics and stronger liberal tradition. Hence, Australia retains more progressive taxation and family support less connected with employment status, while making greater use of tax expenditures to support private welfare.

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“…That there has been significant change to Australian ER is both undeniable and well documented. Overall, there has been a shift toward a market-driven model, underpinned by the principles of neo-liberalism (Bray and Underhill, 2009; Isaac and Lansbury, 2005; Wilkinson et al., 2009). This is most visible in once heavily-unionised and protected industries, with extensive collective bargaining coverage, which have declined dramatically in recent decades (Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 2014; Pekarek and Gahan, 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking the pulse at work: An employment relations scorecard for Australia

Wilkinson

Barry

Gómez

et al. 2018

Journal of Industrial Relations

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This study, and the project behind it, is an attempt 100 years on from the Webbs to comprehensively assess the health of the industrial relations/employment relations system by ‘taking the pulse’ of the employment relationship. If, as we argue, the relative health and performance of the employment relationship remains the key dependent variable of the field of employment relations today, there have been remarkably few attempts to audit and measure its critical dimensions. This study, founded on a large representative survey of workers and managers across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, attempts to do just that, and produces in this article, results of those survey questions for Australia. The article is novel since this kind of employment diagnostic is based on a unique nationally representative survey of employers and employees. The study is also innovative, in that it presents the results of the health of the system in the form of an employment relations scorecard and is the first such attempt to do so in industrial relations.

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Editors' introduction: Australian industrial relations in transition

Cited by 3 publications

References 28 publications

Individual contracting, collective bargaining and wages in Australia

Individual contracting, collective bargaining and wages in Australia

Wage‐Earners' Welfare after Economic Reform: Refurbishing, Retrenching or Hollowing Out Social Protection in Australia and New Zealand?

Taking the pulse at work: An employment relations scorecard for Australia

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