The bulwarking of individualised workplace relations in the mining industry: Retaining managerial control within a contested regulatory space

Abstract

The abolition of the Australian Workplace Agreements by the Rudd Labor government in 2007 was viewed by management of mining organisations as a direct threat to the industry’s preferred workplace relations. These statutory individual agreements had provided management with high levels of prerogative and excluded unions from the workplace. This qualitative case study analyses the strategic choices that management in the Western Australian mining industry made in response to these policy changes. It details how management set out on a strategic course of action to preserve as much of the existing practices as possible. Drawing upon the analytical construct of ‘regulatory space’, it is shown how organisations managed to consolidate their individualised workplace relations well into the collectivised Fair Work regime. The construct brings to the forefront the significance of the intricacies of political processes in the making of legislation as well as the power relationships between regulators and regulatees.