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LABOUR REVIEW NO. 20, 30 JUNE 1999

- State Regulation of Industrial Relations and Privatisation.

- Labour Market Deregulation in Australia: the Slow Combustion Approach to Workplace Change

- FSU and NRMA Look After Older Workers

- Same Work/ Less Pay

- Is Bigger Better? Union Size and Expenditure on Members

Union Amalgamations and the Decline in Union Density

- Employee Relations in Australia - an Inter-industry Comparison

State Regulation of Industrial Relations and Privatisation. Bernadine Van Gramberg and Julian Teicher

The privatisation, contracting out and corporatisation of many public agencies and functions during the 1980s and 1990s have been accompanied by the implementation of human resources management policies and practices. These policies have lead to the increasing individualisation of the employment relationship. The authors think that the emerging pattern of an elitism within the public service may be a distinctive industrial relations of privatisation.

(Monash University. National Key Centre in Industrial Relations; Working Paper no. 66, March 1999)

Labour Market Deregulation in Australia: the Slow Combustion Approach to Workplace Change Iain Campbell and Peter Brosnan

The pressure for the award system in Australia to adapt to demands for increasing flexibility began in the 1980s. The authors argue that the growing trend to deregulation, with the dismantling of the award system built up over the twentieth century, is amplifying trends to growth in precarious employment, wage dispersion and the development of low pay sectors amongst full time workers.

(Monash University. National Key Centre in Industrial Relations. Working Paper no. 67, March 1999)

FSU and NRMA Look After Older Workers

The Finance Sector Union and the NRMA have reached a new redundancy agreement where employees of 45 years of age get an extra week's pay, and one week's pay for each additional birthday to a maximum of ten weeks. The job security agreement sets a new standard for the finance industry. Severance pay has been capped at 104 weeks.

(Discrimination Alert; issue 88, Jun 8, 1999)

Same Work/ Less Pay

A contract may be unfair because it pays an independent contractor less than an employee doing similar work. A courier driver sought review of a contract under s127A of the Workplace Relations Act on the grounds that it was harsh and unfair. On several grounds the court ruled against the driver, mainly because of serious misconduct, but upheld one of the grounds of complaint, which was that the driver's total pay was less than an employee under the award doing similar work. Dowsett J inserted a paragraph into the award which paid the driver the difference between what he would have earned under the award and what he actually received. (Buchmueller v Allied Express Transport Pty Ltd, Fed Ct (Dowsett J), 26 March, 1999. (1999) 45 AILR 4-039)

(Australian Industrial Law News; no. 5, 28 May, 1999)

Is Bigger Better? Union Size and Expenditure on Members

Mark Davis looks at the union amalgamations of the 1980s and 1990s that often were justified on the grounds of benefits to members of the economies of scale. Larger unions do experience lower costs in serving members but other factors and issues do not provide clear evidence of the benefits of amalgamations.

(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 41, no.1, March 1999)

Union Amalgamations and the Decline in Union Density

Mark Wooden also looks at amalgamations, this time challenging the thesis that amalgamations were the cause of the decline in density.

(Journal of Industrial Relations; vol. 41, no.1, March 1999)

Employee Relations in Australia - an Inter-industry Comparison

Three years on from the election of the Coalition, has their industrial relations policy, as implemented by the Workplace Relations Act, been a cause of more or less harmony in the workplace? Mark Cully and Adriana VandenHuevel summarise the results of their research on three key indicators: voluntary labour turnover, absenteeism and industrial disputes. As might be expected, the results were mixed.

(Australian Bulletin of Labour; vol. 25, no. 2, June 1999)

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  Issue 21 contents

»	Aussies To Go For Gold in Foreign Uniforms?
»	Howard Warned: Time Ticking On Entitlements
»	Hotels Charge Triple Time - Now for the Workers
»	Air Attack - Qantas Telesales Under Fire
»	The Hills Are Alive - With the Sound of Pay Cuts
»	National Trust Places Green(back) Bans on Unions
»	Body Hire Campaign Hots Up
»	Attack of the Killer Skips Rocks City
»	A Holiday With a Social Consience
»	East Timor: Emergency Public Meeting Called

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Conference to Heal Rifts in the Labour Movement
»	Fabians Scour Poll Ashes
»	Holiday Confusion

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