HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND TRANS-TASMAN CURRENTS IN INDUSTRIAL RELATION

Abstract

I have attended twenty AIRAANZ conferences, including the first in 1983. This is the fourth AIRAANZ conference that I have attended in New Zealand (of six possible), the third in Auckland, and the second as a New Zealand resident. The first was the third AIRAANZ conference in 1987 at Palmerston North at Massey University, as an Australian visitor. I well remember the events described in Cathy Brigden's presidential address, where I was subjected to a mock 'trial' for questioning 'whether IR academics could contribute significant value to the writing of labour history' (Brigden 2009: 228). I was found guilty of bringing Industrial Relations (IR) into disrepute, but I hasten to say that my comments were not intended to question the abilities of IR academics per se, but to question a particularly narrow systems approach that attempted to reduce labour history to a process involving the development of collective bargaining structures (Markey 1987). Whilst I did not have much public support at the conference, subsequently a number of labour historians privately expressed their support for my argument, including the late Bert Roth, a pioneer New Zealand labour historian.