The Long-Term Implications of the Hancock Report

Abstract

Although much of the Committee's Report is widely supported, the major disappointment of business is with the self-imposed constraints of alleged 'industrial realities' and traditional attitudes. The emphasis in the Report was on strengthening and improving the workings of centralized institutional mechanisms and third party intermediaries rather than on devising means of building better, more productive employer-employee relationships. A preferable reform agenda would have tackled the fundamental problems of the system: the imbalance of power between employers and unions (which would be exacerbated by the Committee's recommendations); various structural and institutional impediments which further orient the focus of action away from the enterprise and seriously restrict the scope for more flexibility and economic sensitivity in our wage determination processes; and community attitudes, which reflect rights, entitlements, resistance to change, and which are fatalistic in relation to prospects for fundamental reform.