Control Over the Organisation and Conduct of Work: Evidence from Some Australian Workplaces

Abstract

Evidence is presented from two principal case studies and three minor case studies conducted in Australia on the extent of union involvement, strategies of employer control, and union responses in organisations. The fieldwork concentrated on the identification of management actions as issues for union concern and the way these are processed. The theoretical basis for the research was to consider ideology as a central resource in the struggle for control. Ideology underlies both employer strategies and the ability of leaders of the union in the workplace to mobilise any opposition. The paper draws attention to the diversity of industrial relations practice existing within the common institutional framework of compulsory arbitration and to the dynamic interaction between employer strategies for control and union workplace organisation and activity. It concludes that the different patterns of interaction observed are unlikely to be equally stable over time.

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