Trends in Industrial Relations in Australia - Case Study Example

Employee Relation Name: Institution: Employment Relation Introduction The purpose of this paper is to interrogate different media articles with the aim of gaining recent knowledge of the trends in industrial relations in Australia. The general overview from recent media articles opens the quest for more literature review about the subject in order to enlarge the understanding of the trend of the employment relationship in Australia. The basis of understanding the employment relationship in any economy is the regulative mechanisms that determine the nature of the associations, how parties relate and expend the relationship, and the progressive outcomes (Gould, 2010). The Fair Work Act forms the cornerstone of employment relationship in Australia, and informs the parameters underpinning bargaining processes. The acts governing the industrial relations require special and purposeful monitoring and assessment in order to ensure that the prevailing law accommodates current and potential conflicts at workplace. Although there are various external parties in an employment relationship, the employer and employee are the primary stakeholders around whom the employment relationship revolves. The moral values of fairness and obligations underline the balance in the relationship between the primary stakeholders. Industrial conflicts result from issues that distort the balance of power between the employer and the employee. The bargaining processes in an Australian context are crucial political and legislative features with changes precipitating with change in political governance. The underlined important features of employment relationship are synthesized through the six media articles that reflect the varying views and contextual circumstances. Employment Relations Regulation The article, “Fair Work Australia to audit WA employers using enterprise agreements” characterises the nature of strategies required for the state regulations over employment relations to be achieved in a standardized industrial approach (ABC News, 2013). The theme of the article is to drive a state campaign that not only requires the businesses in Western Australia to adhere to the regulated rates of pay but also maintain appropriate employment documents. State arms pursue the audit campaigns to ensure that areas with higher than average number of enterprise agreements do not violate the regulated rights of employees. As described by the ABC News (2013), employment relations revolve around workplace agreements that stipulate the nature of the relationship between employers and employees, especially how the relationship is regulated, experienced, or contested. It is imperative from the aforementioned article that all employment relationships require to be regulated to ensure that state rules regarding pay rates, hours of work, holiday entitlement and the condition of the working environment are enforced. It is increasingly industrial practices that in many instances employers negotiate employment relations matters with trade unions, workers’ protection organizations, and related groups that concern themselves with improving the welfare and pay of staff (Oliver, 2010). The article in this context reflects the spirit of collective bargain in which the employee protection group is seeking to enforce terms of employment relationship jointly with the employers. The employment relations subject is such an important social-political and economic theme in Australia that the electorate is often keen to assess the government’s industrial relations policy before electing it. The article, “The major parties’ industrial relations policies” by Capelin (2013) gives a reflective context of the value of industrial relations policy to any governing authority in Australia. Despite the ideological divide between the potential governing parties in Australia, there are common regulations areas that the government arms seem to concur as regards employment relations. The regulation of industrial relations seems to emphasize on less centralized control of employment conditions, a trend pointing at the movement from strictly standardized and state enforced rules of engagement at work place. Additionally, the regulative mechanisms agree on the need for industrial relationship conditions to be set at enterprise level, which allows for appropriate individual departures. Prevailing regulative wave in the employment relationship calls for reduced union’s involvement but to a level within prescribed parameters. In order to give parties to the employment engagement time and the environment to address work related incidents, the regulations appear to limit industrial action to bargaining disputes that may be invoked only if prescribed hurdles are addressed. The regulations are founded on the desire to protect the most vulnerable in the industrial relations, which requires greater prescription of conditions for the employees deemed to have less individual bargaining power (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2013). Following the review of Fair Work Act 2009 in 2012, the Australian government sought implementation of improved laws governing the workplace. Of the rules that came to effect on January 2013 is extension of timeframe for filing unfair dismissal applications from 14 to 21 days, which also included the reduction of the time for filing adverse action from two months to 21 days only (Fair Work Commission, 2013a). Government initiated amendments on rules governing the work place in Australia in progressive and informed by emerging employment relation issues. Parties to Employment Relations Fair Work Commission’s article (2013b) on ‘Australian workplace relations study’ discusses various issues and components governing labor relations in the country. It observes that in contemporary global industrial context, it is imperative that all parties in the employment relationship work in partnership and operate in a bipartisan platform. Parties to the employment relationship in Australia include the employer, employee or their representatives, and the government agencies in charge of different industrial interests. The “Fair Work System” lays the platform for addressing employers and employees for optimal productivity and cooperation (Fair Work Commission, 2013b, Legislations & Regulations section). As indicated in the Australian national workplace relations system, the parties to an employment relationship must adhere to the safer, fairer, and performing working environments. The employer as a party seeks optimal productivity while the employee pursues fair working condition, reward for service rendered, and security for the employment for continual source of income. The regulatory arm is the party that acts as an arbiter for any work related disputes. The needs of all the parties to any employment relationship have to be balanced to derive desired goals. The relationship between the employer and the employee is nurtured by a bipartisan approach in which as the employer seeks optimal productivity; there must be a comprehensive safety arrangement to satisfy the minimum employment conditions. Additionally, the bargaining for all parameters regarding the employment relationship must be based on good faith and at the enterprise level (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2013). Adherence to the national employment regulations is a recipe for a healthy relationship between the parties in an employment engagement. While honouring their duty to improved productivity and care to reduce avoidable losses at workplace, employees deserve protection from unfair dismissal and low pay. While ensuring a proper balance between work and family life, the employee should seek freedom to choose representation in the place of work. To uphold the aforementioned elements of a workable relationship in employment, the primary parties to an employment relationship (employers and employees) are bound by a network of state and national rules, agreements, and procedures. The formal guidelines provide both parties with interdependent and individual rights and duties, which emphasize mutuality in the different approaches of their relationship in order to guard against potential conflicts (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2013). As demonstrated in the Australian fair work system, the rights and obligations between the primary parties in an employment relationship are economic, legal, and constitutional but characterized by complex moral values associated with fairness, equity and trust in the realm of working relationship. The third party elements (government agencies) in an employment relationship play a vital role of influencing mutual decision making for the primary parties that foster fairness. The conduct and behaviour of the primary parties in an employment relationship determines the viability of the industrial engagement. The intervention of government agents with their legislative armoury helps sustain the relationship by providing guidance on the obligations of both sides to each other. Industrial Conflicts Industrial conflict refers to a context of disputes between the primary parties of employment relationship (employers and employees) over issues related to work place conditions (Fair Work Commission, 2013a). Conflict is endemic in every context in which human groupings thrive primarily because people hold divergent interests that are diametrically opposed. The industrial conflict context in the Australian scenario is characterized by the inherent outcomes of the Fair Work Act review that have increasingly fuelled heated debates about the status of industrial relations in the country. The article, “How Fair Work has increased industrial conflict” by Gollan (2013) observes that even though labor statistics indicate decrease in industrial actions, industrial conflict are common in Australian workplaces. The disguised industrial conflict in Australia is underpinned by the increasing gap of key players whose role in industrial relations had been vital for past decades. In particular, the big gap in industrial relations is characterized by the decline in union density and the increasing departure without replenishment of industrial relations professionals. The loss of the key stakeholders in the industrial realm is a fundamental pointer to the lack of industrial expertise in the modern Australian enterprises that are struggling to thrive amidst increasing complexity and sophistication of industrial legislative environment (Gollan, 2013). It is imperative that based on the inherent incapacity of businesses to contain workplace conflicts that the existing Australian industrial relations (IR) system is adversarial and conflict laden. The use of strike statistics as the indicators of the status of the industrial relation is misguiding and inaccurate because they reflect prevalence of a collaborative IR system. But for strikes in the building industry and the Victorian public sector, it is relatively true that the strike activity in currently lower compared to the situation in the late 1980s. However, the numbers may not be communicating the empirical IR context in Australia. Industrial relations data from 2007 relays the prevailing status, which shows trends that paint a picture of an IR system that is neither achieving a conflict-free working environment. According to Gollan (2013), despite suggestions by the Fair Work Commission that collective industrial numbers had slumped from 25 years ago there has been a characteristic increase in new forms of industrial action since 2009 where termination of employment, adverse action and unfair dismissals have been on the rise. It is increasingly becoming apparent that instead of reducing workplace conflicts, the prevailing IR system in Australia is creating further antagonism between employment parties. This situation points at the dire need of action to restore more consensus based approaches that are informed by empirical information and professional advice. Gollan (2013) cites the turn of events in the last five years in which unfair and unlawful dismissal applications and general protection applications revolving around termination of employment claims have increased two fold. The aforementioned situation implies that the current Australian IR system has not achieved the desired employment relations peace. A consensus-based and collaborative approach is much needed to establish an industrial environment for sustainable productivity that would see Australia overcome the emerging local and global economic conditions. Bargaining Processes The article, ‘Bargaining & workplace determinants’ by the Fair Work Commission (2013a) of describes bargaining as an industrial relations concept in which the rules of fairness and obligations are used to balance the interests of employers and employees. Collective bargaining, as a widely applied concept, has been applied in the Australian employment relationship in which the unions have been the negotiating vehicles (Bray & Underhill, 2009). Owing to the changing economic conditions and the evolution of employment relations realm, the collective bargaining process has been slowly paving way for emerging strategies. The bargaining process under the Fair Work Act (FWA) of 2009 is characterized by the agreement-making regime that is founded on the collective bargaining principles compared with the agreement making. The enterprise agreements are the conduits over which the employers and employees in Australia enter into collective working consensus. The bargaining process in this context includes employee representation by unions that have been legally instituted and elected as the bargaining representatives. The enterprise agreements can operate alongside common law contracts of employment and the enterprise agreements prevail over the contract employment’s terms and conditions (Fair Work Commission, 2013a). The enterprise agreements under the FWA differ in nature from the common law contracts in that they are made and approved according to the processes in Part 2-4 of the Act. The bargaining process is greatly dictated by the enterprise agreement compared with the weight of the contract employment. The enterprise agreements entered into and approved through the processes of the necessary sections of the Act bind the existing and potential employees to whom they are expressed to apply. It is the general duty of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to approve the enterprise agreements. The employment relations law in this context requires that the FWC approves the bargaining package as long as sub-section186 and 187 of the FWA are fulfilled. Notable in this context is that the law does not provide any discretionary reference to public interest considerations. The bargaining process in Australia is enshrined in the FWA 2009 that provides the good faith bargaining and sets particular restrictions on the contents of the agreements. The Act is the platform for single stream of collective enterprise agreements that enhances the role of union officials as bargaining representatives and appointed participants in dispute resolution: the law streamlines the process of approval. The process as laid in the FWA does not provide for individually negotiated statutory agreements. The bargaining processes in Australian IR have been largely confined to the enterprise agreements compared to the Work Choice regime that sought to promote direct agreements between employers and employees (Fair Work Commission, 2013b). The Work Choice approach was undesirable as it invaded the employees’ confidence and bargaining power especially in small and medium firms by leaving them unprotected against unfair dismissal. Reflection The basic lesson learned from the reviewed articles is that employment relationship revolves around understanding of the nature of relationship between employers and employees. Additionally, the relationship is characterized by how it is regulated, experienced, and contested. An apparent understanding deduced from reading about the Australian industrial relations is that the statuses prevailing at work place are greatly dependent on the ruling authority. Employment relationship is strongly underpinned by the prevailing employment law that can exacerbate the conflict or create productive environment. The Work Choice for instance was a political drive that resulted in challenges on the side of employees from small and medium enterprises. In comparison, the FWA 2009 restored some confidence and protection by advocating for enterprise agreements in which bargaining is guided by collective interests. However, it appears that no law can be perfect in addressing employer-employee relational issues partly because the industrial realm is increasingly morphing and also the conflicting interests that characterise human nature. Conclusion This paper reviewed six media articles that formed the basis for analysis of employment relationship in Australia. The discussion revolved around crucial features: state regulation, parties to the employment relationship, the industrial conflicts, and the bargaining processes that characterise the concept of industrial relationship. The FWA emerged as the Australian basis of employment relationship procedures and rules, and is the regulative force in the employment matters. The primary parties in the employment relationship are the employer and the employed, and the government law enforcement agents are the go-between that ensures sustainable relations. Industrial conflicts remain prevalent, which reflects the inability of the prevailing system to bring a conflict-free industrial environment. There is need for more collaborative and consensus-based approaches to employment relationship management. Although the union density has been declining in the recent years, the enterprise agreement system appears most favoured especially for small and medium business employees. References Bray, M., & Underhill, E. (2009). Industry differences in the neoboliberal transformation of Australian industrial relations. Industrial Relations Journal, 40(5), 372-392. Capelin, T. (2013, Sept. 27). The major parties’ industrial relations policies. Workplace Insight. Retrieved from http://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au/workplace/2013/08/27/the-major-parties-industrial-relations-policies/. Fair Work Australia to audit WA employers using enterprise agreements. (2013, Sept. 13). ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-13/fair-work/4955876. Fair Work Commission. (2013a, Mar. 19). Bargaining & workplace determinants. Retrieved from http://www.fwc.gov.au/index.cfm?pagename=agreementsdeterminations. Fair Work Commission. (2013b, Sep.6). Australian workplace relations study. Retrieved from http://www.fwc.gov.au/index.cfm?pagename=adminstudy. Fair Work Ombudsman. (2013, Sep. 24). Enterprise bargaining fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.fairwork.gov.au/resources/fact-sheets/workplace-rights/pages/enterprise-bargaining-fact-sheet.aspx. Gollan, P. (2013, Jul. 30). How fair work has increased industrial conflict. Smart Company. Retrieved from http://www.smartcompany.com.au/industrial-relations/056746-how-fair-work-has-increased-industrial-conflict.html. Gould, A.M. (2010). The Americanization of Australian workplaces. Labour History, 51(3), 363-388. Oliver, D. (2010). Union membership among young graduate workers in Australia: Using the experience good model to explain the role of student employment. Industrial Relations Journal, 41(5), 505-519. Read More