Related papers
Australian Workplace Agreements: An Employer Response
Paul Gollan
Journal of Industrial Relations, 2004
View PDFchevron_right
How well off are employees under AWAs? Reanalysing the OEA's employee survey
David Peetz
While most studies have shown employees to be disadvantaged by individual contract regimes, a survey undertaken by the Employment Advocate purported to show that employees were at least as well off, and in some ways better off, under AWAs, particularly in large workplaces where "high performance" strategies allegedly dominated. There are several possible reasons for this set of findings, but one clear factor is the failure to distinguish between managerial/professional and "ordinary" employees in analysis of the effects of AWAs. Further analysis of the survey data indicates that, for ordinary employees, pay is less satisfactory, hours are more likely to increase, and the work-family balance is more difficult for AWA employees than for other employees, while there is little evidence of the higher trust claimed in large AWA workplaces-though there is a possibility that AWA employees have lower expectations than other employees.
View PDFchevron_right
Australian Employers in the Shadow of the Labor Accords
Steve J FrenkelSee AlsoLegal Elite 2025: The state's top lawyers - Business North Carolina
Industrial Relations, 1988
In recent years, Australian unions and the Federal Government have developed a close working relationship. Employers, by contrast, have remained isolated and divided. This article examines their problems and responses in the context of deteriorating economic circumstances. It argues that the macro level Labor Accords have actually served employers' interests well by providing a stable industrial relations environment and by encouraging greater management control and efficiency at the micro level.
View PDFchevron_right
Individual contracting, collective bargaining and wages in Australia
David Peetz
Industrial Relations Journal, 2009
We examine wages in Australia under federally-registered individual contracts and collective agreements using unpublished data from a national earnings survey. The distribution of earnings under registered individual contracts was more unequal than under collective agreements. Average and median earnings under registered individual contracts were lower than under collective agreements. There was little evidence that individual contracting raised wages through raising productivity. The link between contracting and pay appears contingent, varying between occupations, industries and firm size bands, and dependent upon employees' position in the labour market and employers' use of union avoidance strategies. This has implications for the interpretation of studies of union wage effects.
View PDFchevron_right
Australian Workplace Agreements in Practice: The 'Hard' and 'Soft' Dimensions
Tom Bramble
Journal of Industrial Relations, 2001
The purpose of this paper is to assess the claim by the Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) and the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB) that Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) allow employers to integrate both the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ dimensions of ‘strategic’ human resource man- agement (HRM) theory, providing greater efficiency and profitability, while also giving employees more flexibility. Based on a review of the literature and the content of 539 AWAs approved between March 1997 and June 1998, we conclude that the general trend of AWAs is towards the ‘hard’ HRM philosophy of minimisation of costs and maximisation of flexibility of hours. Provisions based around the developmental and personal needs of employees are relatively uncommon and, where they occur, are usually brief. Contrary to Government predictions, there is very little evidence that AWAs are being used to advance the philosophy of ‘soft’ HRM.
View PDFchevron_right
The Impact of the New Zealand Employment Contracts Act on Individual Contracting: Measuring Organizational Performance
Clive Gilson
California Western international law journal, 1997
The management disciplines in the 1990s have seen an extraordinary preoccupation with human resource practices and organizational performance.' Any number of configurations are offered as the magic formula to produce superior economic value added.2 However, employers have long argued that, to be in a position to experiment with various workplace practices, they first need the removal of collective influence or institutional barriers that impair flexibility in the employment relationship. This argument translates into the covert demand for unilateral control over contracts inclusive of the ability simply to terminate and replace at will. The New Zealand Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA) is perhaps the boldest piece of modem labor legislation that systematically dismantles prior employee protections and replaces them with enticements to employers to seek aggressively radical changes to employment conditions. This Article begins with a brief examination of the theoretical foundat...
View PDFchevron_right
Impact of New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act of Industrial Relations, The
Chris Eichbaum
Cal. W. Int'l LJ, 1997
New Zealand awaited the formation of its first government under the new /-% mixed-member-proportional electoral system, nothing seemed more certain JL. JL th a n that the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) would change. Such change could involve the repeal of the Act and its replacement with a statute more in keeping with International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions on collective bargaining and freedom of association, the introduction of a comprehensive mini mum code, and greater encouragement for collective bargaining arrangements, in cluding multi-employer contracts where appropriate. Alternatively, change could take a more incremental form, with the general scheme of the Act retained. A gov ernment of the centre-left would be likely to seek to repeal and replace the Act, while a centre-right coalition would probably entertain incremental reform. In the event, a centre-right National-New Zealand First coalition has emerged, and, while only marginal changes are envisaged, both parties to the Coalition Agreement appear to have influenced the agenda for reform. Those commentators who have represented the ECA as an 'incomplete revolution' may be encouraged by references in the Coalition Agreement to die need to limit judicial activism'. On balance, it is not clear diat diere will be any substantial softening of die Act, notwith standing die claims that will no doubt be made for some of the cosmetic changes by New Zealand First. It is clear, however, diat diere is no suggestion of a return to a formal system of conciliation and arbitration, to monopoly rights of union representation, or to a system of bargaining dominated by multi-employer awards. But diere is a concern to ensure that labour law promotes equitable outcomes, while ensuring die neces sary degree ol flexibility and responsiveness required for labour-market efficiency. Any assessment of die impact of die ECA, and, by implication, the prospects lor legislative reform, should explicidy articulate the preferences of stakeholders. Those who stand to gain from the present arrangements, which is to say diose who have a vested interest in them, have an obligation to declare diat interest if the de bate over die merits of the ECA is to have die necessary integrity.
View PDFchevron_right
Changes in the employment contract?: Evidence from a quasi-experiment
Gary Charness
2002
Many authors have discussed an apparent shift to a new employment contract characterized by less commitment between employer and employee coupled with closer ties between wages within the enterprise and those in the external labor market. We study the issue of when people in the U.S. and Canada feel pay cuts are fair, comparing our results with those of Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler (1986). In contrast to much previous discussion, we find no evidence of increasing acceptance of pay cuts--a measure of whether external, not internal, labor markets are considered fair. These results suggest that new organizational forms might do well to preserve some of the features of the "old" employment contract.
View PDFchevron_right
Collective Contracts in New Zealand: Concessions, Contradictions, Conundrums and Firm Performance
Clive Gilson
The findings presented in this paper are based on responses from New Zealand respondents to our 1995 study on human resource management and labour relations practices in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Data were collected by means of a mail survey addressed to the chief executive officer or managing director of New Zealand firms with a minimum of 50 employees (using a mailing list provided by New Zealand Post). While we received 782 responses from employers in New Zealand, our focus was on collective contracts. We also omitted non-union and not-for-profit respondents. This limited our sample to 484 establishments. Our goal was to examine the relationship between the presence of collective contracts (our primary independent variable) and a number of potential outcomes. Our dependent variables included the incidence of strikes, concessions relating to wages, seniority, job assignments and job classifications, labour-management climate, and perceptions of efficiency. Control variabl...
View PDFchevron_right
How do employment contract reforms affect welfare? Theory and evidence
Cristina Tealdi
2011
Short-term employment contracts have been deployed rapidly across the European Union (EU) in the past two decades. Characterized by a high degree of flexibility, they were thought to be the solution to persistent labor market rigidities and high unemployment rates. The objective of this paper is to investigate both theoretically and empirically the effects of introducing short-term employment contracts to the labor market, and to draw conclusions regarding the change in welfare for different categories of people. Data from the Italian labor market show that workers hired on a short-term basis are mostly young, female, inexperienced, less educated, and poorly qualified. Short-term contracts, which are associated with lower wages, often come in sequences. Labor force participation has increased in particular among older workers. Such changes in labor force composition and transition patterns can be explained by a search model with workers heterogeneity and differentiated contracts. In steady state, a pooling equilibrium of less and more productive workers exists, when only permanent contracts are available. In the presence of short-term contracts, a separating equilibrium allocates less and more productive workers towards different career paths. Through model calibration it is possible to quantify the change in welfare for different categories of workers. Moreover, within a multi-state duration framework, the model is estimated with the Heckman and Singer non-parametric maximum likelihood (NPMLE) estimation procedure. One of the major findings is that inexperienced workers are worse off after the reforms. However, after the accumulation of some work experience, they have the opportunity to compensate for their losses, if they are more productive. Less productive workers, even though provided with higher chances to work, are the ones paying the cost of higher turnover and lower wages. * I am grateful to Dale Mortensen for his extensive support and guidance throughout this project. I wish to thank Sergio
View PDFchevron_right