Industrial Relations Legislation
The Howard government, before being elected in 1996, had promised significant industrial relations reform. In January 1997 it substantially amended the Industrial Relations Act, and renamed it the Workplace Relations Act 1996. The stated aim of this legislation was to foster individual choice in workplace bargaining by reducing the powers of external organisations, particularly trade unions, to intervene. In addition, the legislation reduced powers of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to arbitrate disputes. The Act also introduced individual statutory employment contracts. These were known as Australian Workplace Agreements or AWAs. The watering down of collective bargaining provisions was a source of objection from many workers and unions.
Read more about this topic: 1998 Australian Waterfront Dispute
Famous quotes containing the words industrial, relations and/or legislation:
“If you do not regard feminism with an uplifting sense of the gloriousness of woman’s industrial destiny, or in the way, in short, that it is prescribed, by the rules of the political publicist, that you should, that will be interpreted by your opponents as an attack on woman.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)