Annual Review Paper : Industrial Relations in 1990

Abstract

This review sets out the major issues and events in industrial relations throughout 1990: developments in award restructuring; the gathering pace of union restructuring and of initiatives to reverse the decline in unionisation; the stop/start progress of the National Wage Case; attempts (mainly unsuccessful) to change the legal/ institutional framework of industrial relations; and major industrial disputes of the year. By the end of the year proceedings in the National Wage Case seemed to indicate that the 'decentralisers' might be winning the debate against 'centralisers'. But the outcome of any search for a balance between the two remained uncertain. Two major developments in the wider political-economic arena contributed to this uncertainty. First, the Federal Labor government was re-elected in April 1990; its revitalised leadership gained a fresh mandate to pursue moderate workplace industrial relations reform, while the more draconian decentralist policies of the opposition were put back on the shelf. Second, the economy plummeted from the peak of mid- 1989 into the deepest recession since Labor gained office in 1983; fears of a wages explosion receded to be replaced by a bout of redundancies, a lull in award restructuring, and faltering wage claims. Can the Labor government and the A CTU leadership find a way to nurture enterprise bargaining within a framework of centralised wage restraint? Will employers and unions at the shopfloor keep up the hard work on long-term reform of skills, work organisation, payment systems, bargaining units, and the like when their energies are drained in a struggle for immediate economic survival? These issues arose in the latter half of 1990 and will continue to dominate discussions of industrial relations policy in 1991.