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A Memorable Year: A Review of Australian Industrial Relations in 1993 *
Author(s) -
Sloan Judith
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1177/103841119403200203
Subject(s) - industrial relations , boycott , legislation , collective bargaining , political science , state (computer science) , law , labor relations , law and economics , public administration , sociology , algorithm , politics , computer science
This article reviews the major Australian industrial relations developments that occurred in 1993. Federal industrial relations developments were dominated by the passing of the Industrial Relations Reform Act, a pro‐union piece of legislation which emphasizes bargaining, while at the same time retaining and codifying the award system. Important changes include: an institution alized right to strike, dilution of secondary boycott provisions and the establishment of a new Industrial Relations Court. Simultaneously, changes to state industrial relations laws were enacted and/or took effect in 1993. The Tas manian and Western Australian opting‐out versions of reform are such that their industrial relations jurisdictions are likely to remain intact. Parallel experiments (federal and state) now co‐exist, both of which place primacy on bargaining. The federal system all but guarantees a role for unions in the bargaining process, whereas these states’ systems allow for union involvement, but do not guarantee it. It will be fascinating to make comparative assessments of the outcomes of the two models in the future.