Productivity, Restructuring and the Trade Union Role

John Burgess · Duncan K. Macdonald

14 citations0/0 files storedLabour & Industry a journal of the social and economic relations of work

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Labor Movements and Unions Labor market dynamics and wage inequality Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies

Abstract

The productivity slowdown in the Australian economy, especially in the manufacturing sector, is one of the driving forces behind current attempts to introduce microeconomic reforms into the economy. Central to reform proposals is the perceived role for industrial relations in influencing productivity growth. That there has been a productivity slowdown in Australia cannot be denied. However, available productivity evidence suggests that Australia's recent record is neither poor by international standards, nor is there evidence connecting industrial relations systems with productivity performance. There are conventional macroeconomic pressures bearing down on productivity growth in Australia; one such pressure is the effectiveness of the Accord in bringing about a substitution of labour for capital. Despite such evidence, workplace and industrial relations reforms remain at the forefront of the current drive towards improving labour productivity. The pressure for industrial relations reform is not confined to Government and employers, trade unions are playing an active, if not leading role in formulating and implementing such reforms. Various contradictions in the trade union role in this process are considered.

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References

1987The Uncertainties of Management in the Management of Uncertainty: Employers, Labor Relations and Industrial Adjustment in the 1980s 1983Hearts and Minds: A Social Model of U.S. Productivity Growth 1987Industrial Relations and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry 1983Industrial Relations Performance, Economic Performance, and QWL Programs: An Interplant Analysis 1985Worker Attitudes, Worker Behavior, and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry, 1959-1976 2005Developing a Measure of Industrial Relations Climate 1982Industrial Relations Climate and Company Effectiveness

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1994Correlates of Job Satisfaction and Their Implications for Work Redesign: A Focus on the Australian Telecommunications Industry 1995Empowerment or Enslavement?: Lean Production, Immigrant Women and Service Work in Public Hospitals 1993Labour Management Space, and Restructuring of the Australian Coal Industry 2000A Collective Catastrophe: Productivity Maximisation and Workplace Bargaining in the Australian Coal Industry 1992Researching Australian Industrial Relations: Dawn or Twilight of a Golden Age?

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