ABSTRACT
The Australian labor market has undergone significant change in the past decade. From 1983 to 1991, wages and employment conditions were determined primarily by centralized national bargaining. Agreements known as “The Accords” were negotiated periodically among the federal government, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), and to a lesser extent, national employer organizations. These determined changes in wages and other employment conditions as well as industry policy and social policy. Changes to wages and employment conditions were given effect through legally binding awards made by Australia’s industrial tribunals, which are armed with powers of compulsory conciliation and arbitration. Since 1991, this system has been replaced by decentralized enterprise bargaining as the principal means of determining wages and employment conditions. Industrial tribunals now determine wages and a narrower range of employment conditions only for lower paid workers (approximately 24 per cent of the workforce) (ABS 2000a). This decentralized system is referred to as deregulation of the labor market, and is associated with a diminished role for industrial tribunals and unions whose membership has been falling. Labor market flexibility through temporary and part-time employment has grown rapidly. Flexible working hours have become much more widespread; earnings, more dispersed.
