"Continuity and Change in Australian Industrial Relations: Recent Developments / Continuité et changements récents dans les relations industrielles en Australie / Continuidad y cambio en las relaciones industriales en Australia: Desarrollos recientes"

Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : [email protected] Article "Continuity and Change in Australian Industrial Relations: Recent Developments / Continuité et changements récents dans les relations industrielles en Australie / Continuidad y cambio en las relaciones industriales en Australia: Desarrollos recientes" Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI The recent accession to power of a conservative (Liberal/ National Coalition) government in Australia would seem to mark a major change-perhaps a transformation-in Australian industrial relations. However, a more subtle reading of events suggests that key ingredients of the new government's reform p ac k a ge w er e ac tu a l l y f o r e s h a d o w ed , ev en p a r t i al l y implemented, by the former Australian Labor Party government. The latter was well known for its enthusiastic implementation of orthodox economic policies, albeit in a context of 'corporatism'. This suggests a degree of continuity between the policies of the ALP and Liberal/National Coalition governments. At the same time, there are ingredients of significant change, some of them on the face of it minor, but which, over time, are likely to erode the power of unions and sharpen the divide between the union and non-union sectors. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Australia, along with most other Anglo-American nations, experienced deepening pressures to reconfigure its industrial relations arrangements to conform to neo-liberal notions of labour market 'flexibility' (see OECD 1986). In Australia's case, these pressures were exacerbated by trade and financial liberalization undertaken in the 1980s, since it was felt that industrial relations was increasingly poorly aligned with the changes in the rest of the economy. What was distinctive about this series of changes, in international comparative terms, was that the major deregulatory reforms, inspired by international economic orthodoxy, were undertaken by an ostensibly social-democratic party-the Australian Labor Party (ALP) (Kelly 1994: 23). More specifically , according to a widely received view, unions were allegedly 'involved' in the processes via 'corporatist' arrangements, …