Is Enterprise Bargaining Still a Better Way of Working?

Keith Townsend · Adrian John Wilkinson · John Burgess

31 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Industrial Relations

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Labor Movements and Unions Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies Legal and Labor Studies

Abstract

In 1989, the Business Council of Australia (BCA) produced a blueprint for change titled ‘Enterprise based bargaining units: A better way of working’. To a great extent, this document and the corresponding shifts in business, government and union approaches to wage and conditions determination meant that Australia shifted from a centralised to a workplace system of bargaining. After more than two decades of enterprise bargaining, though, we ask the question: Is it still a better way of working? While the Business Council of Australia pointed to a panoply of advantages, we look at the other side of the argument. Decentralisation may be inefficient at a number of levels. First, there is the procedure of bargaining and the resources, expertise and time that is required. Second, there are the outcomes of bargaining, where despite a more individual focus, in many cases, outcomes demonstrate very little variation across enterprises. Finally, there are the collateral consequences of bargaining: conflict, reduced trust and disruption. Is enterprise bargaining still meeting the needs of the actors or has the model run its course? We consider two case studies of bargaining that demonstrate the limitations and advantages of enterprise bargaining.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 31 citations exist upstream.

References

1988Bargaining Structure, Corporatism and Macroeconomic Performance 2013Australian Bulletin of Labour 2000The transformation of Australian industrial relations 2003Bargaining (De)centralization, Macroeconomic Performance and Control over the Employment Relationship 2008Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts are Changing Our Jobs 2001Industrial Relations Reform in Australia: Causes, Consequences and Prospects 2001Australian Exceptionalism: The Role of Trade Unions in the Emergence of Enterprise Bargaining 2007Equal employment opportunity legislation and policies: the Australian experience

Cited by

2016Old game, new rules? The dynamics of enterprise bargaining under the Fair Work Act 2017HRM practices of MNEs and domestic firms in Ghana: divergence or convergence?2016Bargaining over Australian public service cuts: Do forcing strategies work?2013To what extent do line managers play a role in modern industrial relations?2016Similarity or Variation? Employee Representation and Consultation Approaches amongst Liberal Market Economy Multinationals

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.