Compulsory Arbitration System Research Articles

The Entanglements of Europe: History, Geography, Identity

Europe is a continent of extraordinary variety and diversity geographically, ethnically, nationally, culturally, economically and politically. Yet at the same time all its parts are and always have been so deeply linked by their destiny that this continent can accurately be described as a single albeit complex political entity. Anything crucial in any area of human endeavour occurring anywhere in Europe always has had both direct and indirect consequences for our continent as a whole. The history of Europe is, in fact, the history of a constant searching and reshaping of its internal structures and the relationship of its parts. Today, if we talk about a single European civilization or about common European values, history, traditions, and destiny, what we are referring to is more the fruit of this tendency toward integration than its cause.

Australia and the system of arbitration in Singapore

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to record and analyse the historical circumstances in which Singapore complemented its legacy of British-type collective bargaining with the compulsory arbitration system long practiced in Australia. It notes the role of Australians (particularly one Australian industrial relations scholar at the University of Malaya) in the inception and adoption of industrial arbitration in Singapore. It seeks to identify, analyse, explain and assess the extent of the subsequent divergence of Singapore’s regulatory industrial relations regime from that of Australia since the 1960s. In doing so, it contributes to Asia-Pacific labour history and adds to the literature on international and comparative labour relations with its focus on cross-national influences on national industrial relations regimes.

New employee representation

Legislative protections supporting New Zealand's compulsory arbitration system made unions a vital part of industrial relations from 1894 to 1991. Following a dramatic shift to a more deregulated labour market, the union movement suffered a sharp decline in influence and membership during the 1990s. In October 2000 the Labour‐Alliance Coalition that formed government in 1999 introduced its Employment Relations Act that includes new protections for registered trade unions. The early impact of the legislation has been to promote the registration of a plethora of new unions. However, the new unions formed since the introduction of the Act represent very few workers and have narrow interests. Although they exist formally as unions, these organisations are more accurately alternative forms of employee representation that exist to facilitate enterprise bargaining and, in some instances, to allow employers to frustrate the activities of larger, established unions.

Women and Wage Labour in Australia and Canada, 1880-1980

A century of women's work history in Australia and Canada reveals both similarities and contrasts. Women workers in both countries have faced persistent occupational segregation and lower pay, justified by the family ideal of male breadwinner and the accompanying perception of women's paid labour as secondary, less skilled and transient. While Canada's female labour force has historically demonstrated significant proportion of immigrants from countries other than England, Australia's female labour force contained fewer immigrants but revealed visible minority of Aboriginals who have demonstrated labour militancy in several well-known disputes in this century. Perhaps the most striking differences between the two countries, however, relate to the extent of the Australian state's involvement in wage tribunals and in the compulsory arbitration system, both of which have given women improved wages and a floor of protection. By contrast, intervention in Canada was minimal until well into the 20th century when minimum wage laws were passed during and after World War I. Despite these differences there are areas of similarity, particularly in this century as women workers tended to mobilize at roughly the same time, not only in unions and work places but also in neighbourhoods, ethnic communities, rural areas and to some extent in labour and left wing political groups. Modern feminist movements in both countries have waged some successful campaigns to change not only government views and agendas, but also those of trade unions. Thus, while Australian women have perhaps been more successful at playing the state depending on the government in power, both groups of women are increasingly faced with the challenge of government retreat from egalitarian policies under the onslaught of right-wing, corporatist agenda.

Employer Associations: Assessing Plowman's Reactivity Thesis

In developing the dominant theory of Australian employer associations, David Plowman has consistently argued that Australian employers developed permanent associations as a response to the introduction of compulsory arbitration. From this developed a history of reactive employer involvement within the arbitration sys tem. By linking association formation with the introduction of a unique system of compulsory arbitration, Plowman saw formal employer combination in Australia as exceptional as well as reactionary. This paper challenges the reactivity thesis by subjecting a number of Plowman's key assumptions to historiographic and comparative scrutiny. First. permanent associations, whether organized on a trade, industry or state basis. existed before the advent of arbitration. Second, the increase in employer association formation and activity that occurred around the turn of the century can only partly be attributed to the introduction of compulsory arbitration. Finally, the development of employer associations in Australia showed striking similarities with that of other countries in terms of both periodization and impetus for formation.

Dispute Resolution in the Employment Tribunal Part One: Mediation

The Employment Contracts Act 1991 (the ECA or the Act) completes the legal evolution in New Zealand industrial relations from to compulsory arbitration to direct bargaining. It also represents one of the concluding steps in the of the New Zealand economy. Under the compulsory arbitration system, the Arbitration Court was the central institution and provided arbitration as a dispute resolution process for a wide of range of issues. The Arbibation Court represented an arm of administrative law where the instituion, on behalf of Parlianent, instituted its wishes to regulate aspects of the labour market.

Lessons from Down‐Under: conciliation and arbitration in Australia*

At a time of increased interest in arbitration, this article provides a review of the Australian system of compulsory arbitration. It outlines the structure and processes of the Australian federal system, the current tensions within it, and some lessons for the UK.

Reason, Force or Compromise: Egalitarian Wage Structures under Bargaining and Arbitration

It would appear that there is widespread acceptance, at face value, of the view that the Australian arbitration framework produces a more egalitarian wage structure than would exist in its absence. Further, this egalitarian role, which it is said must exist in compulsory arbitration, is to be contrasted with collective bargaining where power struggles are said to be the order of the day and the weak (in terms of bargaining power) fall by the wayside. The aim of this paper is to seek to establish whether this particular view of Australia's industrial relations system is a fact or a myth. Previous studies, the new evidence presented and the explanation of the forces at work in wage determination all combine to suggest that the Australian relative wage structure would not be very different under collective bargaining in times of either full employment or high unemployment. The widely held view of the compulsory arbitration system being more egalitarian than collective bargaining is contradicted. Support for a continuation of the present system in Australia should have to rely on other advantages offered or believed to be offered by Australia's centralised compulsory arbitration system.

Rival Unions and Registration: The Australian Federation of Air Pilots and the Air Pilots Guild of Australia, 1969 to 1979

In 1959, the Australian Federation of A ir Pilots effectively withdrew from the system of compulsory arbitration. From that point until towards the end of 1979, the Federation was content to remain outside the system. However, this allowed the development of something else rare in Australian industrial relations—the emergence of a rival union, the Air Pilots Guild of Australia. This paper seeks to examine the relationship that existed between the two unions in the period 1969 to 1979, and its influence in leading the Federation, for so long set against the idea of compulsory arbitration, to seek registration under the Act. The conclusion of the paper is that the emergence of the Guild had a most important, if unintended, bear ing on the decision by the Federation to seek registration.

Australian Trade Unions and Postwar Immigration: Attitudes and Responses

The reaction of the Australian trade union movement to the new phases of immigration in the post-World War II period is examined. The responses were by no means uniform in reflecting political, industrial and craft divisions amongst unions and changes in employment conditions. Attention will focus on central trade union bodies, principally the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Labor Council of New South Wales. Some mention will also be made of the situation in particular unions and attempts by migrant workers to organise and act independently of established unions. The con clusion is that the trade unions' attitude to migrants should be related to the concurrent industrial problems, trade union tradition and the constraints of the compulsory arbitration system.

PRODUCTIVITY BARGAINING IN COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS

Abstract: Despite several experiments with productivity bargaining in the Commonwealth employment sector, the rigidity of employment conditions was considered to be a limiting factor to the wider application of this technique to the public sector. Nor did it appear to be suitable for adoption within the compulsory arbitration system. However the frustrated expectations of blue collar employees in government employment during the Labor government's term of office stimulated the exploration of productivity bargaining as a way of achieving reduced working hours without contravening efforts to restrain wage inflation. The events within the Australian Post Office (later to become the Australian Postal Commission and the Australian Telecommunications Commission), the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories Commission, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission and the Reserve Bank of Australia are described and some differences in the processes involved noted. The nature and significance of productivity bargaining as a technique for the immediate future are also discussed, particularly in the light of continuing stagflation and the interest of the government in wage restraint and national productivity growth.

Compulsory Arbitration: The Case of British Columbia Teachers

Examination of a system of compulsory arbitration that has regulated labor relations for all public school teachers in British Columbia from 1937 through 1973. Description of the environment of labor relations in the country; Discussion of labor-management negotiations in British Columbia; Information on the bargaining parties; Results of arbitration. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Compulsory arbitration and the state sector

"Nothing in this Act shall apply to Her Majesty the Queen, or any department of the Government of New Zealand", said section 91 of the original Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894, but there was a saving sentence "except as herein is otherwise expresslly provided". What was expressly provided was spelled out in Part lV. sections 82 to 84 which applied the act to the govemment railvays. This raises two questions: Why were railwaymen included in a measure which otherwise applied to the private sector only? and, why were railwaymen the only government employees covered by the arbitration act? My paper addresses these questions and reaches the conclusion that fear of a national transport strike as the main reason for the inclusion of railwaymen though the reasons for the exclusion of other government employees are less clear-cut. The paper then explores the attitudes of state employee organisations to the compulsory arbitration system up to the establishment of the first wagefixing tribunal in the state sector, patterned on the Arbitration Court, in 1944, and concludes with a brief survey of more recent developments.

Indonesian Labor Relations in Their Political Setting

This article presents the first comprehensive description of Indonesian labor relations to appear in an American publication. The author shows that Indonesia's fragmented labor movement, compulsory arbitration system, and turbulent plant-level relations between unions and management can be fully understood only by recalling the country's history of Dutch rule and recently won independence, the predominantly agrarian nature of its economy, and the government's present drive for economic development. Estimates of union membership are given, together with data on the incidence of industrial disputes, the strength of the leading political parties allied with the labor movement, and the growth of cooperative societies in the nonindustrial areas of the economy. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

The Economic Theory of Wage Regulation

ROADLY speaking, the fixation of wages by the state has been advocated for four major reasons: (i) as a means of establishing a minimum below which the pressure of competition and of employers should not force labor; (2) as a means of raising the efficiency of labor and of industry; (3) as a part of a general system of compulsory arbitration with a primary view to preventing or reducing strikes; (4) as a means of building up consumers purchasing power and, therefore, presumably increasing the quantity of goods produced and consumed, as well as the numbers employed.

Democracy in New Zealand

UNIMPORTANT as New Zealand is today in world affairs only million and half people sharing less than one percent of the world's trade ? there was time when sociologists came to investigate our institutions. For quarter of century New Zealand prided itself on leading the world in extending state social services and giving equality of opportunity by means of legislative action; today New Zealand has not merely retrenched and economized, but has lost much of her faith in the govern mental institutions and social services which so amazed Andr? Siegfried, H. D. Lloyd, the Webbs, Ramsay MacDonald, and many other foreign observers. New Zealand was the first country to attempt to settle indus trial disputes by the legal processes of Compulsory Court; the present Coalition Government, part descendant of the Liberal Party which made New Zealand a land without strikes, has scrapped the compulsory arbitration system in industrial rela tions. The Liberal Party rose in the eighties of the last century as revolt against the Skinflints, whose one remedy for an eco nomic crisis was to economize and reduce wages; the Liberal Party in the next great depression has set up National Expendi ture Commission, which has peered into every pigeonhole of state assistance to the people and has proposed to settle the crisis by discontinuing, among other things, free books to primary school children in necessitous cases, abolishing local administration boards, making more difficult the training of teachers, raising the minimum age of admission to primary schools, abolishing all grants for adult education, abolishing family allowances, cutting down old age pensions, and so on. Except for protests from the interests concerned, such economies are being accepted willingly, sometimes almost joyously, as proof of the determination of New Zealand to adjust herself to the depression by doing without frills and luxuries. The government set up committee of economists who found that the national income had fallen from ?150,000,000 in 1928-29 to ?110,000,000 at the beginning of 1932. They advocated second cut of 10 percent in wages and salaries of civil servants, lowering of interest and rents, and special impost on the rentier class. The government adopted