Abstract
Gerry Griffin (1952–2023): University leader, researcher, media commentator, teacher and mentor
It was with great sadness that we heard of Gerry Griffin’s sudden death in 2023.
Gerry was such a vital, outgoing and dynamic personality, this news was hard to comprehend. With the recognisable Irish accent, a twinkle in his eye and wry sense of humour, Gerry loomed as a larger-than-life figure in all his many endeavours. This In Memoriam obituary pieces together some insights from various sources close to him to try to summarise the facts, reminiscences and legacy he leaves.
From a university academic, researcher and regular radio commentator to a research centre director followed by Head of School roles and ultimately, a highly successful Pro-Vice Chancellor in his later years, Gerry made his mark and left a huge legacy. At retirement, he was awarded the Emeritus Professor title which was richly deserved.
However, over and above all his own career achievements, Gerry’s lasting legacy can be seen in the success of his many proteges, colleagues and mentees and the numerous fond memories of the stories, jokes, passion and inspiration he shared with us in the industrial relations community and beyond. He made significant contributions to industrial relations (research and practice) and to university management. In his quest for excellence, Gerry raised the bar for many of us and achieved outstanding results in terms of quality graduates, courses, research programmes, research rankings and international accreditations. Along with the way, we also had some ‘grand’ times with Gerry, as he would have put it.
A short biography
Gerry was born in Kilrush, County Clare, in Ireland on 4 May 1952. He came from a family of five, his mother was May Griffin and father Gerard Griffin.
Gerry attended local Parish schools and later spent 2 years in a Catholic boys’ boarding school, St. Flannans College, School in Ennis, before going on to study at University College Dublin where he excelled in his undergraduate and masters’ degrees.
In the mid-1970s, Gerry moved to Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania Business School in the United States, where he was a research assistant to Herbert R. Northrup, a prominent professor of management who authored a textbook, The Economics of Labor Relations, and many other works. Northrup also advised Republican presidents. Gerry was, however, more interested in studying and understanding trade unions and he thought that the strength of Australian unions would be interesting to research. So, he emigrated to Australia.
University of Melbourne
By 1978, Gerry was undertaking his PhD at the University of Melbourne on white-collar unionism, as well as working as a part-time lecturer, where he taught introductory industrial relations, comparative industrial relations, and research methods. By the early 1980s, Gerry had joined the full-time staff at the University of Melbourne and as graduate of the Masters’ course, Elsa Underhill recalled, Gerry worked closely with the late Kevin Hince, Les Cupper, the late June Hearn, Julian Teicher and John Benson. Santina Bertone, who joined the department as a research fellow in the early 1990s, recalls that Gerry also worked with Richard Mitchell, Stephen Deery and the late Rick Iverson through the newly established Centre for Industrial Relations.
Gerry and John co-taught the Masters’ course for most of the 1980s, bringing in other lecturers and guest speakers from time to time. This course was an engaging mixture of theory and policy, critical commentary and engagement with key practitioners across the field of industrial relations. A very popular component of the course was the Thursday night seminar, usually well attended and addressed by leading industrial relations academics and practitioners, such as ACTU and Trades Hall officials, employer association representatives, employment tribunal Commissioners and labour lawyers. After lively presentations and discussions, the participants would generally adjourn with Gerry and John to University House, the staff club, or Lygon Street for food, drinks and more lively discussion. As John Benson recalls, these informal sessions led to further ideas on research projects, a strong network of contacts and suggestions concerning important topics for future seminars.
The course was a resounding success – many high-profile union practitioners and students from various backgrounds took it, either full or part time. Many went on to have high-profile careers in unions, businesses, government or academia. There was also a graduate diploma which provided a pathway into the master’s course for those who had not completed an honours degree, making it accessible to many more students.
In the early 1980s, Gerry’s research was primarily on unionism in the banking and insurance industries which was also the focus of his PhD thesis. Elsa recalls that few Australian academics were researching female, white-collar workers then; the prevailing emphasis was on manufacturing, mining and construction, all male-dominated industries. Through Gerry’s contacts, Gerry and John began working with several white-collar unions to undertake research on women and unions. This research resulted in a series of papers published in Australia and overseas on women workers’ attitudes, participation, priorities and barriers encountered to unionism.
Santina Bertone writes ‘I was fortunate to have known Gerry when he was a ‘humble’ senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, already effecting lasting change through his leadership in the IR/HRM Master’s course, together with John Benson, and his regular media appearances. Words can never do justice to the career and impact one person makes in their field, and in Gerry’s case, the task is even harder because he was multi-talented and multi-skilled’.
Santina also recalls the novelty of the research stream Gerry began with an externally funded project that investigated the role of immigrants in the union movement in Victoria and union responses to their multicultural memberships. The grant, won by Gerry from the (then) Bureau of Immigration Research, funded an 18-month study into the industrial relations attitudes and behaviour of immigrant unionists and their participation in Victorian unions. Santina recalls feeling privileged to be chosen by Gerry as the research fellow on this project. Such was Gerry’s infectious enthusiasm that Santina left a flourishing union role for what became her first step in an academic career by working on the project. At its conclusion, the report was launched by the Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, the late John Halfpenny an event that was covered on the TV news that night. The two journal articles and government book published from that research are still being cited, more than 30 years later, as there is little other research of this nature available.
Some reminiscences
The first thing most of us would recall of Gerry is the long socks and shorts he usually wore at the University. But if he had an external appointment, these were quickly replaced by a shirt and tie (with trousers and jacket of course).
Perhaps in answer to the oft-cited calls for an overarching theory in IR, Gerry’s preference was to build such a theory from data, statistics and case studies. Of these latter sources, he had many, given his extensive insights and contacts within the industrial relations field, which he drew on for his regular radio interviews. Ever the pragmatist and ironically self-effacing, Gerry often referred to himself as ‘a grubby empiricist’.
Gerry had the Irish ‘gift of the gab’, an infectious laugh and wry sense of humour. This made him an entertaining University teacher and raconteur. He was dynamic, physically fit, a big thinker, yet with a great eye for detail, an excellent networker, a devoted family man who seemed to have boundless energy. His cheerful, ‘can do’ attitude rubbed off on others. Ever busy and restless in his pursuit of new projects, Gerry still made himself available whenever needed for guidance and advice. John, who worked with Gerry at the University of Melbourne for 10 years, can vouch for the claim there was never a dull moment in discussions ranging from the quality of produce at Victoria Market to analysing the rise of collective bargaining in the late 1980s. Gerry had strong views on such topics but was always prepared to listen to other points of view.
At Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia & New Zealand (AIRAANZ) conferences, Elsa, John and Greg Bamber recall that Gerry was often the life of the party in the evenings when everyone was relaxing after a full day of presentations. In the early 1990s, he also organised the highly successful Melbourne AIRAANZ conference and subsequently served as AIRAANZ president.
Gerry was a gracious host to international visitors to the University of Melbourne as he was at his subsequent universities. Greg recalls that Gerry kindly helped to host his 6-month visit from the University of Durham in the United Kingdom to the University of Melbourne in the 1980s. His hosting was much appreciated by Greg and other visitors and was also useful for students and colleagues as it allowed them access to such international scholars.
Monash University
In the mid-1990s, Gerry left the University of Melbourne to take on the role of Director of the Australian Research Council-funded National Key Centre in Industrial Relations at Monash University. He followed in the footsteps of eminent Centre Directors before him including Emeritus Professor Malcolm Rimmer. Here, he continued to build on the legacy of industrial relations education and research at Monash that had been initiated there by the late Hon. Emeritus Professor Joe Isaac AO.
Gerry later became Head of the big Department of Management at Monash University where he is remembered fondly. Later, he moved on from focussing on his discipline to management roles in Monash’s huge Faculty of Business and Economics. Julian Teicher took over from Gerry as the Head of Department and earlier as the Key Centre’s Director before Monash later formed Australian Centre for Research in Employment and Work and subsequently International Consortium for Research on Employment and Work.
University of South Australia
From Monash, Gerry was recruited to the University of South Australia (UniSA), where he was appointed Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Business Division and the City West campus, a role that included responsibility for nearly 10,000 students, nearly 200 full-time academic staff and a budget of some $100 million. He directly managed a team of three deans (research, teaching and learning and international/external engagement) and five heads of School (Accounting, Economics, International Graduate School of Business, Management and Marketing). Reporting to the Vice Chancellor, he was a member of the University’s Senior Management Group.
John Benson was subsequently appointed Head of the School of Management at UniSA and worked again with Gerry for 7 years. As John recalls, Gerry was easy to work with, supportive of his leadership team and clearly focused on outcomes. This gave Heads the freedom to be innovative and the success of the Business Division was, in no small part, due to Gerry’s leadership approach. By the time, Gerry retired in 2013, the Business School, as it had now become, had significantly grown in its international reputation. This enhanced reputation was not lost on the European Foundation for Management and Development, which subsequently recruited Gerry as an assessor for its Quality Improvement System (EQUIS). This involved him conducting peer reviews of other business schools internationally for several years.
Gerry’s legacy
Gerry’s legacy was multi-faceted, at the individual and institutional levels. There is space for only a few examples. At the institutional level, he left a legacy by leading the UniSA Business School’s achievement of EQUIS accreditation and by providing strong leadership for the influential National Key Centre in Industrial Relations at Monash University. Gerry also initiated and oversaw the establishment of the Law School at UniSA which pioneered professional placements and the development of a Legal Advice Clinic that allowed students under supervision to provide free legal advice to the Adelaide community.
His leadership was also evident in his teaching with his colleagues and the highly successful post-graduate courses at Melbourne and Monash universities. At the individual level, Gerry helped to mentor many industrial relations colleagues and graduates including Santina Bertone, Michelle Brown, Peter Gahan and Marjorie Jerrard.
After retiring, in an address at a UniSA graduation ceremony, Gerry was typically direct and pragmatic: ‘For the first 10 years of my academic life, I lectured to a large introductory-level class, usually around 300 students, approximately the same number of graduands here today. I quickly learned that to maintain their interest I had to focus on one key message, perhaps even repeat it, and certainly finish within time limits. So please pardon me if I follow the same process here’. ‘How do you make these societal and organisational contributions and, here today, can I offer any guidance to assist you in this process? My suggestion, which I strongly commend to you, is to be a proactive participant within your sphere of influence. This means that:
You must form and express your views.
You must actively influence your communities and organisations.
You must offer solutions as well as criticisms.
In short, you must be a contributor and, where appropriate, a leader’.
These words could easily sum up Gerry’s own style, contributions and legacy. Ever active, always seeking to be informed, have influence and offer solutions – that was Gerry, whether he was giving a lecture, a radio interview, writing for a journal or leading a business school. His presence was unmissable. He will be missed.
Gerry leaves a loving wife of many decades, Helen Griffin, and three grown up sons.
