Recovering from the market citizenship experiment: Recent developments in Australian industrial relations policies

Abstract

Recent changes in industrial relations policies represent a break with the Australian experiment with market citizenship at work. At the Federal level, they involve the adaptive reuse of legacies that have, in recent decades, been regarded as secondary to the system (e.g. awards and industrial tribunals) to renovate the foundations of labour law. Innovations in wages policy are helping repair the foundational economy (i.e. sectors providing the infrastructure of everyday life including education, health and social care). These changes are being driven by new social coalitions involving unions from the new heartlands, Non-Governmental Organizations and researchers launching initiatives that are supported by Australian Labor Party governments and often buttressed by large-scale commissions of inquiry. Their key achievement has been delivering novel coordination of wages policies with education, social and fiscal policies. In this way, the new coalitions are creating a new politics of solidarity.