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Nearly the Year of Living Dangerously: In the Emerging Worlds of Australian Industrial Relations
Author(s) -
Peetz David
Publication year - 1999
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 - 10.1177/103841119903700202
Subject(s) - industrial relations , hierarchy , productivity , earnings , state (computer science) , government (linguistics) , labour economics , wage , collective bargaining , economics , bargaining power , power (physics) , political economy , market economy , political science , management , economic growth , law , finance , linguistics , philosophy , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
A hierarchy of earnings growth is emerging, with the greatest pay gains experienced by senior executives, influenced by a form of comparative wage justice, and the least by mid‐level non‐union employees reliant on the safety net. Increasingly, wage increases secured in highly organized industries do not flow elsewhere. Productivity grows, with minor contributions from bargaining, but it confronts fatigue. Shifts in patterns of industrial conflict, establisbed by the move to bargaining and before that the Accord, are reinforced by diminished employee power and changed approaches by some employers. The role of the state is critical: the AIRC is supplanted by courts and other state agencies and by activist, mostly partisan government intervention. A useful model for reform processes has been developed in Queensland, but the national government's agenda seems set to reinforce the Australian obsession with the ‘enterprise’ rather than ‘bargaining’.