Employee Involvement and Participation in the Organisational Change Decision: Illawarra and Australian Patterns

This chapter analyses the use of different participative mechanisms associated with the introduction of corporate organisational change using data from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and a similar survey undertaken in 1996 within the Illawarra Region, south of Sydney, New South Wales. Unions in many western European countries have a long history of cooperation within 'corporatist' participation mechanisms, and particularly works councils. Evidence from the time period up to the early 1990s indicated 'that employee participation practices were rather thinly scattered across Australian workplaces, usually management dominated, and often short-lived in practice'. The chapter focuses on whether there were clear differences in the Illawarra data compared with the Australian patterns of involvement in the organisational change decision. The positive union 'voice' effect on the introduction of workplace reform was found in the analysis by Machin and Wadhwani (1991) of the 1984 (British) Workplace Industrial Relations Survey.