Abstract
In recent years, both Australia and New Zealand have embarked on significant labor market reforms which have resulted in more decentralized and individualized systems of industrial relations. Although both countries share a common heritage of state-sponsored conciliation and arbitration, which fostered a centralized approach to labor market regulation, each has responded in its own way to economic and political pressures to reform its long-established industrial relations system. Despite differences in the process of indusrial relations reform, both countries now have industrial relations systems which are more individualistic and in which unions play a less significant role than in the past.
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Notes
The government expects up to 85% of Australian employees to come under the new laws. However, it has been suggested that it will at best cover 75% and less than 60% in some States (Stewart 2005b).
The corporations power under the Constitution allows the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to “foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth.” By contrast, the labor power allows the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to “conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State.”
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Lansbury, R.D., Wailes, N. & Yazbeck, C. Different Paths to Similar Outcomes? Industrial Relations Reform and Public Policy in Australia and New Zealand. J Labor Res 28, 629–641 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-007-9015-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-007-9015-0