Industrial Legislation in 2005

Sutherland, Carolyn; Riley, Joellen

doi:10.4135/9781849202404.n4

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Referred to as ‘WorkChoices’, the full title of the new law was Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005 (Cth). Described as ‘represent[ing] the most fundamental revolution in industrial relations since federation’ (Hall, 2006: 292), its main features were the attempt to establish a ‘national’ industrial relations system by replacing State jurisdictions, a new wage-fixing institution, changes to collective bargaining and unfair dismissal regulations and tighter control of industrial action (Riley and Sarina, 2006).…”

Section: Union Regulatory Strategies: the Changing Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Kaine

Brigden

2015

Econ. labour relat. rev.

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Changes to the Australian regulatory landscape over the past three decades of global liberalisation created regulatory uncertainty for unions. Coupled with membership decline and internal restructuring through union amalgamations, they prompted an important reorientation by unions (back) to the workplace, and precipitated different strategic decisions and organising challenges. However, the proliferation of fragmented employment relationships rendered workplace-centred organising an insufficient response. As a result, some unions experimented with ways of supplementing existing legal frameworks by other regulatory initiatives, through campaigns that resulted in the layering of regulation. In this article, we examine attempts by three unions – covering garment workers, road transport workers and aged care workers – to address the needs of members in garment homeworking, road transport and aged care in a contested regulatory environment.

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Section: Union Regulatory Strategies: the Changing Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Kaine

Brigden

2015

Econ. labour relat. rev.

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“…The government could now introduce changes to labour law that had been thwarted by that house from 1996 when the Workplace Relations Act, marked by compromises with smaller political parties, had been passed. The details of Work Choices have been much discussed (for example, Forsyth and Sutherland 2006; Riley and Sarina 2006; for an overview in this journal, Cooper and Ellem 2008) and require only a brief summary here. The changes which caused most public alarm were: the removal of protections against unfair dismissal in organizations where fewer than 101 people worked; individual contracts known as Australian Workplace Agreements, introduced in 1996, could now undercut collective agreements; employers could require new employees to sign them as a condition of employment.…”

Section: Unions and Work Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peak Union Campaigning: Fighting for Rights at Work in Australia

Ellem

2011

Brit J Industrial Rel

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Many peak unions are in crisis, their traditional reliance on economic or political exchange with employers and the state undermined through falling union membership and the collapse of national bargaining systems. New methods, chiefly as agents of mobilization, and new sources of power, including community organizations, are often advanced as solutions. In Australia, where trade unions faced a fundamental and immediate threat from a national government after an election in 2004, the 'Your Rights at Work' campaign signalled a shift in peak union strategy. Although this campaign unseated the government in 2007, its legacy is unclear: reviving the power of peak unions and conceptualizing the means to do so remain difficult. Peak Union Campaigning 265 Peak Union Campaigning 269Some subjects were interviewed more than once; in these cases, the in-text numerals indicate the interview number: ACTU Officer,

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“…WorkChoices undermined unbundling and logrolling as the Minister had the power, unilaterally, to make ad hoc regulations specifying 'prohibited' bargaining matters. Once these regulations became current, the government's Workplace Authority had to 'remove any prohibited content from an agreement, even if the agreement has already been approved' (Riley andSarina 2006: 349. See also Cooney 2006).…”

Section: Negotiation and The Question Of Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Largely remained unremarked outside specialist academic circles (Cooney 2006;Fenwick 2006;Riley and Sarina 2006), however, was the attempted obliteration of the award system, the core system of regulatory instruments at the heart of Australia's industrial relations for a century. While legislative downgrading of the award system in favour of collective -but enterprise-based bargaining -had begun in 1993 under Labor Prime Minister Keating, the Howard government accelerated its demise and also weakened collective bargaining involving unions (Fenwick 2006;Stewart and Williams 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Howard government, through WorkChoices, intended individual agreement making between employer and employee to be the preferred model. Thus, a 'choice' to enter into an AWA meant an employee no longer had any access to an award or collective agreement (Cooney 2006;Riley and Sarina 2006;van Barneveld 2006). The Howard government spent enormous energy and public money on propagating the idea that WorkChoices freed individuals to negotiate directly with their employers, as if that had never been possible before.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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AWAs and Individual Bargaining in the Era of WorkChoices: A Critical Evaluation Using Negotiation Theory

Sheldon¹,

Kohn²

2007

Econ. labour relat. rev.

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The Howard government's WorkChoices legislation appeared set to irremediably remake industrial relations in Australia by prioritising individual agreement making (through AWAs) at the expense of Australia's traditional award systems based on collective bargaining. That government explicitly intended these changes to reduce labour market rewards to, and protections for, low paid and more vulnerable employees. Yet, it also deployed a rhetoric of individual choice in advocating these changes, promoting, in particular, a notion that individual bargaining and agreement making under WorkChoices empowered individual employees by opening opportunities for integrative (mutual gains) bargaining. This article asks what these changes really meant for bargaining between individual employee and employer. We analyse crucial elements of WorkChoices to highlight how its main structural mechanisms intensified employee bargaining weakness in individual bargaining. As well, we use negotiation theory, especially in relation to integrative bargaining, to evaluate the government's own published advice to individual employees on how to bargain for an AWA. We find that the government explicitly sought to disempower employees through WorkChoices' additional legal and institutional impediments and also through the concerted attempt at coaching employees to choose a losing path in their AWA negotiations.

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Industrial Legislation in 2005

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering

Peak Union Campaigning: Fighting for Rights at Work in Australia

AWAs and Individual Bargaining in the Era of WorkChoices: A Critical Evaluation Using Negotiation Theory

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