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Book Review
| Joe Isaac and Russell D. Lansbury (eds), Labour Market Deregulation: Rewriting the Rules, Federation Press, Sydney, 2005. pp. xvii + 237. $49.50 paper.
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| This book of readings is dedicated to Keith Hancock. He has had a distinguished career as one of Australia's leading labour economists, being appointed to a chair at the tender age of 28, an academic administrator as the Vice Chancellor of Flinders University from 1980 to 1987, and as a member of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission for ten years. He was also chairman of a major inquiry into industrial relations conducted in the mid-1980s: Australian Industrial Relations Law and Systems: Report of the Committee of Review (with C. Fitzgibbon and G.E. Polites) Australian Government Publishing Service, 1985. (It became known as the Hancock Report). The report had the misfortune to recommend a strengthening of a centralised approach to industrial relations regulation at about the same time most of the major parties decided to move towards a more decentralised system. |
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Besides an introductory tribute by the editors to Keith Hancock the volume comprises 11 chapters. The first, by Joe Isaac, provides an overview of major developments that have occurred in Australian industrial relations since the 1980s. His chapter does not have a commentary. It is followed by six chapters that have a commentary and another four that do not. The reason why some chapters have commentators and others do not is not explained. There is also a lack of uniformity in the referencing of the chapters. This indicates the lack of a firm editorial hand. With the exception of two, or possibly three, chapters the overall quality of this volume is slight. Other than for these chapters it is doubtful if this volume will be remembered in the future. The major reason for this is that the majority of the chapters recycle material already published elsewhere, comment on and add little to an issue already well canvassed and present material at a fairly low level of analysis. Those that fall into the first category are the chapter on industrial citizenship by Ron McCallum, the plight of women, especially those who have the twin responsibilities of working and caring for children by Barbara Pocock and that by Keith Hancock on wage determination in the twentieth century. |
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Rae Cooper's chapter provides another account of how recent external, or policy, changes have negatively impacted on unions, while maintaining there is still 'life in the old dog yet'. Two points could be noted here. First, she has downplayed, or ignored, the internal problems which have acted to reduce the effectiveness of unions. In particular, it would have been useful to have examined the various issues raised by Barbara Pocock in her excellent 'Institutional Sclerosis: Prospects for Trade Union Transformation', Labour & Industry, August 1998. Second, if there is a chapter on unions and recent changes, why is there not one on employers/employer associations? |
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Peter Saunders presents data on recent trends in wage income inequality in Australia. He takes readers through the usual methodological problems with such statistical work. He says, however, that 'No attempt is made to identify the causes of the observed trends' (p. 69) and goes on to state 'that further work is needed before any definitive conclusions can be reached about the determinants of observed changes in wage income inequalities' (p. 87). The second statement is a logical consequence of the first. Moreover, his inability to attempt to explain reasons for what he found is suggestive of intellectual laziness. Anne Daly, in one of the useful commentaries in this volume, attempts to fill this void. |
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Sue Richardson is interested in examining if low wages are a short term phenomenon or are for life. The policy implications of the two are radically different. The problem with her chapter is that it comprises little more than a literature survey of overseas developments, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. It will be of little use for policy makers in this country. Russell Lansbury and Grant Michelson examine and reject the proposition that industrial relations, the discipline, is in 'crisis'. They note that while it is being taught less, it still has a strong research focus. They provide readers with but yet another account of the challenge from human resource management and the synthesis into the brave new world of employment relations. Other than for anecdotal comments, they provide no hard evidence, or surveys, concerning the extent or quality of research in industrial relations. In the absence of not knowing how can we know anything? |
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Let us explore for a moment the notion that industrial relations, that which is examined at universities, is experiencing a 'crisis'. It will be suggested here that a discipline is in crisis if it cannot correctly identify that which it observes, and by this I mean phenomena is most obvious (a low level test). Economists would be dismissed as irrelevant if they said an economy was healthy if there were low/negative growth rates and high rates of unemployment. The same fate would befall medical scholars and practitioners who said the nation was healthy notwithstanding a pandemic. What then are we to make of a book entitled Labour Market Deregulation at a time when the current federal government has increasingly interfered in the workings and operation of the industrial relations system? Besides the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) and the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 (Cth) (both of which are lengthy pieces of legislative regulation), which occurred after the publication of this volume, the government has intervened in an increasing number of industries — the best known being in the waterfront and building and construction industries — and has created new regulatory bodies. A discipline which cannot even see or describe that which is prominently before its eyes is, I would suggest, in crisis! |
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The first of the three better chapters is by William Brown. He provides a more than useful account of third party intervention overseas, particularly within the European Community. Its problem is that it will date and that serious scholars will find themselves utilising primary sources in their accounts of international developments. |
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Bob Gregory has been one of Australia's leading labour economists of the last 30 years. His chapter is noteworthy for his musing on his long term research interests and a realisation that assumptions he held dear to his scholarship may be in error. In this chapter he is concerned with the inability of a wide range of policy measures to make inroads into 'persistent' high levels of full time employment for adult male unskilled workers. He reluctantly finds that the solution to this problem may lie with lessons from microeconomics. He says 'The answer from Economics 1 is clear ... the labour market needs to be deregulated and the wages of the disadvantaged should fall by a considerable margin to create jobs for them' (p. 218). Is it conceivable that this is a 'social' problem that is beyond an economic solution? Is it also conceivable that to attempt an economic solution will create externalities which will adversely impact on the welfare of others at the lower levels of the labour market? Irrespective of this, the abandonment of Keynesian economics by one of its leading exponents is a major development in the battle of ideas concerning the working of Australian labour markets. |
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The third and most innovative and interesting chapter in this volume is by Ron Callus. He revisits the time of the Hancock Report and the task of proposing policy changes. At the time, Australia made use of awards which were occupationally based. Callus notes, that since the Hancock Report, Australia has increasingly adopted enterprise bargaining. While acknowledging that the horse has already bolted, he maintains that Australia would have been better advised to have adopted a system of industry based awards. Such a system, he contends, would better satisfy both the individual and collective needs of firms and their employees in respective industries. His observations are thought provoking and worthy of serious consideration. |
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This volume is dedicated to the outstanding contributions of Keith Hancock both to scholarship and, as an administrator, to the operation of Australian labour markets. Unfortunately this volume is fairly slight. With the exception of the contributions by Callus and Gregory, and to a lesser degree Brown, it is unlikely that it will have any lasting value. |
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| University of Melbourne |
BRAHAM DABSCHECK | |
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