Anti-unionism,Employer Strategy,and the Australian State,1996

Abstract

One of the outstanding features of contemporary Australian industrial relations has been the dramatic growth in employer de-collectivization strategies. Four dimensions of employer strategies, sometimes interlinked and overlapping, are identified and analyzed in this article—employer lockouts, individualization of bargaining, counters to organizing campaigns, and the use of human resource initiatives in areas such as recruitment and selection. While some tactics have emerged organically through new management practices, the reconfiguration of employer strategies has been primarily state-led; legislative and non-legislative interventions have created opportunities, incentives and pressures for firms to adopt anti-union strategies.

Keywords

anti-union legislation collective bargaining lockouts organizing HRM

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. 1977-1996. Trade union members, Australia. Cat. No. 6325.0. Canberra : ABS.

---. 1990. Award coverage. Cat. No. 6315.0. Canberra : ABS.

---. 1994-2003. Industrial disputes. Cat. No. 6321.0 . Canberra: ABS.

---. 1997-2007. Employee earnings, benefits and trade union membership. Cat. No. 6310.0. Canberra: ABS.

---. 2002. Labour statistics: Concepts, sources and methods. Canberra: ABS.

---. 2004. Employee earnings and hours. Cat. No. 6306.0. Canberra: ABS.

Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). 1999. The Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union and G & K O’ Connor. Justice Boulton, Print S0987, November 17. AIRC.

---. 2003. Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union and the employer. Senior Deputy President O’Callaghan, PR931516, May 15. AIRC.

Bachelard, M. 2001a. Fighting back on dry-land waterfront. The Australian, April 9.

10.

---. 2001b. Meatworks defends high trainee rate. The Australian, April 10.

11.

Barry, M. , and P. Waring. 1999. "Shafted": Labour productivity and Australian coal miners. Journal of Australian Political Economy 44:89-112.

12.

Barton, R. 2002. Internationalising telecommunications: Telstra. In Privatisation, globalisation and labour, ed. P. Fairbrother , M. Paddon , and J. Teicher. Annandale, Australia: Federation Press.

13.

Bray, M. , and P. Waring. 2005. The rise of managerial prerogative under the Howard Government. Paper presented to Federal Government’s Proposed Industrial Relations Policy workshop, Sydney, Australia, June.

14.

Briggs, C. 2002. The new employer militancy: Anti-unionism in the new millenium . Sydney, Australia: ACTU Organising Centre.

15.

---. 2004. The return of the lockout in Australia: A profile of lockouts since the decentralisation of bargaining. Australian Bulletin of Labour 30 (2): 101-12.

16.

Cooper, R. 2003a. Organising at work: Growth strategies in Australian white-collar unions, 1996-2000. PhD thesis, Faculty of Economics, University of Sydney.

17.

---. 2003b. Trade unionism in 2002. Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2): 205-23.

18.

---. 2004. Trade unionism in 2003. Journal of Industrial Relations 46 (2): 213-25.

19.

---. 2005a. Trade unionism in a de-collectivised environment. Refereed conference paper presented to Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand conference, Sydney, Australia, February 9-11.

20.

---. 2005b. Union campaigns survey. (NSW Unions survey, November 2004-March 2005). Unpublished data.

21.

Cooper, R. , and B. Ellem. 2006. Union power: Space, structure and strategy . In Rethinking work: Time, space and discourse, ed. M. Hearn and G. Michelson. Melbourne, Australia: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Dundon, T. 2002. Employer opposition and union avoidance in the UK. Industrial Relations Journal 33 (3): 234-45.

23.

Ellem, B. 1999. Trade unionism in 1998. Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (1): 127-51.

24.

---. 2002. Power, place and scale: Union recognition in the Pilbara, 1999-2002. Labour & Industry 13 (2): 67-89.

25.

---. 2004. Hard ground: Unions in the Pilbara. Port Hedland, Australia: Pilbara Mineworkers Union .

26.

---. 2005. Dialectics of scale: Global capital and local unions in Australia’s iron ore industry. Economic and Industrial Democracy 26 (3): 335-58.

27.

---. 2006. Scaling labour: Australian unions and global mining. Work , Employment and Society 20 (2): 369-87.

28.

Federal Court of Australia. 2001a. Australian Workers’ Union v. BHP Iron Ore Limited. FCA, 3.

29.

---. 2001b. CPSU v. Telstra Corporation Ltd 2001. FCA 267 (March 21, 2001).

30.

Hearn Mackinnon, B. 2003. Strategic management and employee relations: CRA/Rio Tinto’s de-unionisation campaign, 1991-2001. PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, Australia.

31.

Howe, J. 2005. Deregulation of labour relations in Australia: Toward command and control. Working paper no. 34, Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law.

32.

Lewis, S. , and M. Davis. 1994. Optus staff in non-union deal. Australian Financial Review, August 22, 3.

33.

Logan, J. 2002. Consultants, lawyers and the union-free movement in the United States since the 1970s. Industrial Relations Journal 33 (3): 197-214.

34.

O’Brien, J. 1994. McKinsey, Hilmer and the BCA: The "new management" model of labour market reform. Journal of Industrial Relations 36 (4): 468-90.

35.

Ogbonna, E. 1992. Organisational culture and human resource management: Dilemmas and contradictions. In Reassessing human resource management, ed. P. Blyton and P. Turnbull. London: Sage.

36.

Ostenfeld, S. , and J. Lewer. 2003. Award simplification, employer pro-activity and employee resistance: Towards a preliminary framework. In Developments in enterprise bargaining in Australia, ed. J. Burgess and D. Macdonald. Melbourne, Australia: Tertiary Press.

37.

Paul Budde Communications Pty Ltd. 1996- 1997. Telecommunications strategies report, 1996/1997. Bucketty, Australia: Paul Budde Communications Pty Ltd.

38.

Peetz, D. 1998. Unions in a contrary world: The future of the Australian trade union movement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

39.

---. 2002. Decollectivist strategies in Oceania. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 57 (2): 252-81.

40.

Plunkett S. 1993. Rome in a day. Business Review Weekly , April 2.

41.

Ray, C.A. 1986. Corporate culture: The last frontier of control. Journal of Management Studies 23 (3): 287-97.

42.

Royle, T. 1999. Recruiting the acquiescent workforce. Employee Relations 21 (6): 540-55.

43.

Sheldon, P., and L. Thornthwaite , eds. 1999. Employer associations and industrial relations change: Catalysts or captives? Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin.

44.

Smith, P. , and G. Morton. 1993. Union exclusion and decollectivisation of industrial relations in contemporary Britain. British Journal of Industrial Relations 31 (1): 97-115.

45.

van Barneveld, K. , and R. Nassif. 2003. Motivations for the introduction of workplace agreements. Labour and Industry 14 (2): 21-38.

46.

van den Broek, D. 1997. Human resource management, cultural control and union avoidance: An Australian case study. Journal of Industrial Relations 39 (3): 332-48.

47.

---. 2001. Crossed wires: Cultural change and labour management in the Australian telecommunications industry. PhD diss., School of Industrial Reactions and Organisational Behaviour, University of New South Wales, Australia.

48.

---. 2002. Monitoring and surveillance in call centres: Some responses from Australian workers. Labour and Industry 12 (3): 43-59.

49.

---. 2003. Recruitment strategies and union exclusion in two Australian call centres. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 58 (3): 515-36.

50.

Visser, J. 2006. Union membership statistics in 24 countries. Monthly Labor Review (January): 38-49.

Anti-unionism,Employer Strategy,and the Australian State,1996–2005

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References