Industrial Relations and the Legacy of New Protection

Abstract

This paper argues that public policy changes towards industry protection are the underlying causes of the major industrial relations changes that are currently taking place. The operation the tariff agencies and industrial tribunals gave rise to a New Protection environment that conditioned wage outcomes and employment relations. The reduction in industry protection has reduced the scope for New Protection processes and outcomes, and has necessitated a re-evaluation of wages policy and labour costs.

Who Killed the Australian Automotive Industry: The Employers, Government or Trade Unions?

“…Additionally, the significant role in setting wages and conditions through the arbitration system granted unions the capacity to press for higher wages that manufacturing employers could absorb through increased prices with minimal risk of consumers choosing instead to purchase imported products, which were effectively priced out of the local market by high tariffs (Plowman, 1992;Conlon & Perkins, 2001). Additionally, the significant role in setting wages and conditions through the arbitration system granted unions the capacity to press for higher wages that manufacturing employers could absorb through increased prices with minimal risk of consumers choosing instead to purchase imported products, which were effectively priced out of the local market by high tariffs (Plowman, 1992;Conlon & Perkins, 2001).…”

“…Additionally, the significant role in setting wages and conditions through the arbitration system granted unions the capacity to press for higher wages that manufacturing employers could absorb through increased prices with minimal risk of consumers choosing instead to purchase imported products, which were effectively priced out of the local market by high tariffs (Plowman, 1992;Conlon & Perkins, 2001). Several influential accounts claim that the interdependent nature of policy arrangements underpinning the protectionist settlement meant that the removal of protectionism for manufacturers would expose them to competitive pressures, which would invariably place unions and industrial relations arrangements under strain (Plowman, 1992;Kelly, 1994). According to Conlon and Perkins (2001, p. 2), from its beginnings in the 1920s and expansion in the late 1940s, Australian automotive manufacturing was a "case study in protectionism."…”

Trade costs and the timing of competition policy adoption

“…The 1906 Act appears to have been aimed particularly at foreign trusts, and it was already seriously weakened in 1908 by being declared in part unconstitutional. Some legislation was introduced in 1965, but the Trade Practices Act 1974 is widely considered to have provided the first platform for a comprehensive competition policy (see Merrett, Corones, and Round 2007;Plowman 1992;Steinwall 1999). Austria: 2002Austria: (alternative year: 1988 Austrian competition policy was based on an abuse principle until 2002, when a general prohibition of restrictive practices was introduced (see EC Competition Policy Newsletter 1995; Böheim 2002).…”

The Concept Of The State In Australian Industrial Relations Theory

“…As noted earlier, state inteiVention into employment regulation was part of a broader set of institutional arrangements that dominated Australian economic and political development throughout the twentieth century (Plowman, 1992). As an integral component of the New Protection arrangements of economic and political management, the oligopolistic profits earned by Australian producers in the climate of state-imposed protection and restrictive immigration were redistributed through the centralised arbitration system (Castles, 1988).…”

“…While the leading work in this area remains the Macintyre and Mitchell edited volume Foundations of Arbitration, other significant writers include Fitzpatrick, Macarthy and Rickard (Fitzpatrick, 1969(Fitzpatrick, [1941Frnzer, 1990;Macarthy, 1967;MacintyreandMitchell, 1989;Rickard, 1976). This literature ranges from the purely descriptive, such as Mitchell and Stern's (1989) colony-by-colony discussion of legislative initiatives, through to tentative and explicitly theoretical studies of state behaviour offered by Palmer ( 1989) and Brereton (1989) as well as the various permutations of the origins of state adoption of labour regulation (Fitzpatrick, 1969(Fitzpatrick, [ 1941; Macarthy, 1970;Macintyre, 1989;Plowman, 1992;Rickanl, 1976).…”