IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uow/depec1/wp05-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Assessing the Impact of the Workplace Relations Act From 1996 to 2004: Increasing Flexibility or Decreasing Collectivism?

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper tests the impact of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (WRA) by looking at changes in the behaviour of a panel of workplaces in the Illawarra Region of NSW between 1996 and 2004. The results support the proposition that the major impact has been on the level of unionisation and union density in these workplaces. There was virtually no expansion in the use of enterprise bargaining or AWAs, although there was a small but significant increase in non-union agreement making. Rather than encourage the use of single jurisdictions to register awards and collective agreements, in the Illawarra at least, there was a strong trend to dual State and Federal jurisdictions. Thus the WRA has been relatively ineffective in achieving flexibility and decentralised employee relations goals but has resulted in a high level of decollectivisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Hodgkinson, Ann & Markey, Ray, 2005. "Assessing the Impact of the Workplace Relations Act From 1996 to 2004: Increasing Flexibility or Decreasing Collectivism?," Economics Working Papers wp05-30, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp05-30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@commerce/@econ/documents/doc/uow012213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Bell, 1994. "Australian Business Associations: New Opportunities and Challenges," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 19(2), pages 137-158, December.
    2. David Sadler & Bob Fagan, 2004. "Australian Trade Unions and the Politics of Scale: Reconstructing the Spatiality of Industrial Relations," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(1), pages 23-43, January.
    3. Ann Hodgkinson, 2004. "Strike Activity under Enterprise Bargaining: Economics or Politics?," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 7(4), pages 439-457, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Radwan, Lukas & Kinder, Sebastian & Dispan, Jürgen, 2013. "Opportunity structures for co-determination in innovations: The case of the Stuttgart area," MPRA Paper 53252, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2013.
    2. Sarah Kaine & Cathy Brigden, 2015. "Union responses to regulatory change: Strategies of protective layering," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 26(4), pages 614-630, December.
    3. Bradon Ellem, 2006. "Scaling labour," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(2), pages 369-387, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Workplace Relations Act; Illawarra region; flexibility; decollectivisation;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uow:depec1:wp05-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Siminski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuowau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.