Dwon Example

Dwon Example Dwon â€" Essay Example >  In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Australia experienced pressures to reconfigure its workplace relations arrangements so that it can conform to neo-liberal notions of flexibility in the labour market. Significant reforms were made in the late 80’s and early 90’s. A series of reforms which include the Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993 and the Industrial Relations Amendment Act (1992, 1994) were introduced by the government that was in place, that allowed a collective agreement for individual enterprise and encouraged the spread of enterprise bargaining. In Australia, this was exacerbated by financial and trade liberalization. Since early 80’s, the government realized that Australia’s industrial relations were poorly aligned with the changes that were taking place in the country’s economy. Australia government undertook radical employment relations reforms in the late 80’s and early 90’s, followed by nearly a decade of adaptive change (Birmingham, 1997). After Labor government being in power for 13 year, a coalition government was elected (comprising of National Party and Liberal Party) in the general election of 1996. This coalition government was subsequently re-elected in 1998, 2001 and in 2004, before being defeated in Labor Party in the Federal elections that took place in 2007. Labour law policy and Industrial relations were critical aspects of the Coalition’s social and political platform throughout the coalition government was in power and in pursuance of these employment reforms the coalition government introduced legislations that touches on employment relations (Birmingham, 1997). During the period that the Coalition government was in-power, a stream of legislation that deals with employment relations were introduced, with the major changes were found in its Work Choices (or Workplace Relations Amendment) Act 2005 and its Workplace Relations Act 1996. Numerous arguments has been put forward about the rationales on the legisla tive changes, particularly in its 2005 form, which revolutionalised Australian labour law standards. These changes include the desire to make employers and workers for making arrangements in the workplace that suited them rather than such arrangements entrenched by employment or industrial tribunals, restore managerial prerogative, the desire to reduce the complexity of workplace regulation and associated costs upon employers, the desire to increase productivity, the desire to replace adversarial workplace relations with a more co-operative system and so on. These were some argument brought forward by the government to redistribute wealth from capital to labour to a system and protect workers which was also concerned with making businesses in Australia to be competitive ones. Non-standard work has long been a feature of employment relations and Australian labour markets. In the past, non-standard work was regulated through the award system. Hence, it was difficult for businesses in Australia to access to and organization of non-standard work, historically; it was not a simple matter of businesses or employer choice. But after the passing of Workplace Relations Act 1996, this position of non-standard work was changed considerably, and in return, employers were provided with incentives that enable them to engage with workers under different arrangements for non-standard work. Empirically it has been found that non-standard work have been on the rise since early 90’s, and has continued to rise after Workplace Relations Act 1996 legislation was introduced (Birmingham 1997). These changes into industrial relations were responsible to growth in temporary employment in the Australian service sector (Waring 2003). However, between 1980 and 1990, the labor government chose to adopt an adaptive approach to reforms in the labor market, the government encouraged, rather than imposed labour market flexibility. The key measures that were set by the government in the sa me period were designed to promote incidence of enterprise-level bargaining (Birmingham 1997).