The Law and Employee Participation—Evidence From the Federal Enterprise Agreements Process

Abstract

In 1993 the Industrial Relations Reform Act amended the Industrial Relations Act 1988 (Cwlth) by, among other things, introducing certain enterprise bargaining provisions into Australian labour law. These provisions required that a process of 'consultation' with employees should take place in the negotiation of an agreement. They also appeared to require that an agreement contain a process enabling ongoing consultation over work-related matters at the workplace. The research undertaken for this article attempted to assess the impact of these provisions on schemes for employee involvement in workplace decision making. All certified agreements approved by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission between 1 April 1994 and 30 March 1995, and all enterprise flexibility agreements approved by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission between 1 April 1994 and 6 September 1995 were examined for evidence of compliance with the new consultation provisions introduced into the Act. The conclusion drawn is that while many agreements complied with the Act, there was a general failure on the part of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to implement both the letter and the spirit of the law on 'consultation' pertaining to the certification of agreements. On the whole we feel that the legislation failed to produce results that would have strengthened the spread of employee involvement practices in industry.