From Family Wage to Parental Leave: The Changing Relationship between Arbitration and the Family

Abstract

From the establishment of a ‘family wage’ for men in the early 1900s through to ongoing test cases over parental leave in the early 2000s, the arbitration system has played a central role in shaping the policy framework affecting families and the intersection of market and domestic labour. The institutionalisation of a needs-based family wage for men under ‘new protectionism’ in early twentieth century Australia placed the arbitration system at the centre of numerous policy debates and reinforced pre-existing notions of the male breadwinner family. Abandonment of the family wage and the protectionist environment, along with changing social values and labour force patterns, have recast the relationship between arbitration and the family over the course of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the wage setting system continues to sustain a contemporary variant of the male breadwinner model and is playing a pivotal role in shaping parental employment rights into the twenty-first century.