by Nick Wailes & Russell D. Lansbury

IV. The process of collective bargaining over flexibility

D. Fragmented flexibility

The current Liberal-National coalition government did not accept this view that the coordinated flexibility system provided adequate scope for flexibility bargaining. Rather, they have argued that the bargaining system in Australia continued to place impediments on the determination of conditions of employment appropriate to the individual enterprise, and have argued that this was a major impediment to the competitiveness of the Australian economy.

The fragmented flexibility system, while it has retained a role for the award system, has attempted to increase the range of bargaining options available to employers and employees. As is shown in figure 6 below, the alterations to the industrial relations system contained in the WROA Act (1996) have increased the types of bargaining that can take place in Australia. In particular, provisions have been made for the development of an individual bargaining stream, called Australian workplace agreements (AWAs). While these agreements are assessed in relation to the relevant award, this test is administered by a separate statutory body (the Office of the Employment Advocate: OEA). Furthermore, once the OEA has ratified this agreement, the link between these agreements and the award is broken. While the provision for an individual bargaining stream could result in substantial change in the Australian industrial relations system, many have argued that these agreements will not be widely adopted. This, it is argued, is because in their current form they are too difficult and costly to negotiate.

The WROA Act has made the standards for ratification of a nonunion collective agreement less onerous and not substantially different to those that apply to union-based enterprise agreements. Furthermore, the reforms have sought to limit the scope of the standards against which these agreements are assessed by limiting awards to the specification of 20 allowable matters. This could result in contraction of the safety net provided by awards, however this is dependent on the approach taken to award standards by the AIRC.

Finally, the election of the Coalition government resulted in the cessation of informal bargaining at the national level between the government and the ACTU. The Accord agreements which had eventuated from these negotiations have been perhaps the most distinctive features of Australian industrial relations since 1983. Since the mid 1980s these Accord agreements typically included a commitment by unions to accept flexibility enhancing changes in patterns of industrial regulation in return for compensating tradeoffs in relation to the broader macroeconomic matters. Most of these tradeoffs have been directed at increasing the "social wage" (see Appendix 1 for further details). The end of this process suggests that the only venue for bargaining over flexibility is at the enterprise level. The coalition government has not attempted to provide any forum for nationwide interest intermediation to replace the Accord.