ABSTRACT
'Productivity' has reappeared in conversations about Australia's economic performance and prospects over the past couple of years, after a rather extended absence. In these conversations as in earlier ones productivity appears to mean different things to different people. One of the arguments of this chapter is that, for improvements in Australians' average material living standards to be sustained over the coming decade and beyond, Australia's overall productivity performance will need to improve considerably from the level that has characterised the twenty-first century thus far. But another argument of this chapter is that it will prove very difficult to achieve any sustainable improvements in the productivity performance of individual workplaces and hence in the productivity performance of the Australian economy as a whole if the costs and benefits of achieving those improvements in productivity performance are not seen to be more 'fairly' shared than those associated with past episodes of stronger productivity growth.
