Understanding Australian Industrial Relations (7th edition)

Citation

Saville, K. (2008), "Understanding Australian Industrial Relations (7th edition)", Management Research News, Vol. 31 No. 10, pp. 791-793. https://doi.org/10.1108/01409170810908534

The introduction of the Workplace Relations (Work Choices) Amendment Act 2005 (Cth) (“Work Choices”), which came into effect on 27 March 2006, arguably resulted in the “the greatest single change to Australian federal labour law since the introduction of compulsory conciliation and arbitration” more than a century ago (Fenwick, 2006, p. 86). Presented to the Australian public as a regulatory framework for the “historic modernisation of Australia's workplace relations system” (Howard, 2005), Work Choices represented a radical overhaul of the processes and institutions that sat at the very heart of Australia's industrial relations system. The radical nature of these changes resulted in a heightened profile for the traditional discipline of industrial relations within Australian society and prompted the revision of many an industrial relations text to ensure their continued relevance to academics, students and managers alike.

Bearing this in mind, Understanding Australian Industrial Relations, now in its seventh edition, has been thoroughly revised to provide readers with an up to date account of the operation of the Australian Industrial Relations system under Work Choices. Given the extensive revisions necessitated by legislative reform to the texts description of Australia's labour laws and its industrial relations regulatory framework, the addition of Peter Gahan from Monash University to the writing team, with his background in Australian labour law, is timely and adds further strength to the text.

Understanding Australian Industrial Relations is a text which deliberately uses an applied approach to develop the knowledge and skills of students who are studying industrial relations for the first time. In adopting such an approach, the authors eschew theoretical or conceptual work in favour of explaining the history and the reality of Australia's current industrial relations processes and institutions. In support of this approach, the authors go to great lengths to inject a sense of reality regarding the context in which industrial relations is practiced by including a wealth of source materials. These include interviews with industrial relations practitioners, policy documents, newspaper articles, legislative provisions and useful websites. The applied approach adopted by the authors results in a text which is simply written and an extremely accessible source of information for anyone, from student to practitioner. Whilst the text does not have the theoretical depth to be a core text in a degree subject, it does nevertheless have a place in universities, providing a simple, accessible source that lecturers can direct those students. This is advantageous to both Australian and international students, who may be struggling to grasp the basic foundational concepts of industrial relations, and the intricacies of the Australian system.

The seventh edition of Understanding Australian Industrial Relations offers its readers an expanded text which is structured in four parts, containing a total of 11 chapters and an extensive appendix. The first two parts of the text, whilst failing to acknowledge the theory, are heavily influenced by Dunlop's Systems Theory (1958). Part 1, comprising of chapters 1 to 4, sets the scene for students. After an opening chapter on definition and context, in which the reader is introduced to the concepts of industrial relations and conflict, there are chapters on each of the three key actors within an industrial relations system, namely trade unions and other forms of employee representative organisations, employer associations and the government (or the “state”). Part 2 of the text, which includes chapters 5 to 8, provides a heavily revised, restructured and expanded discussion of the regulatory framework, and the current processes it provides to facilitate the interaction of, and the resolution of disputes between, employees and employers. Chapter 5 outlines the legal framework regulating industrial relations, looking in particular at the principal sources of law affecting work. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 provide a detailed discussion of the evolution and operation of the Work Choices legislation by considering the legal framework for bargaining and arbitration, tribunals and awards, and agreement making, respectively. Considerable work has gone into this section of the text which has been expanded from two chapters to the four we now see. This new structure allows the reader to come to grips with the complexity of the changes made to Australia's regulatory framework by the Work Choices legislation in “baby steps” rather than being completely overwhelmed by their enormity. Part 3 of Understanding Australian Industrial Relations, which comprises chapters 9 to 11, aims to equip the individual reader with the skills and knowledge needed to manage the industrial relations issues that may confront them within their own workplaces. This section has been expanded in the seventh edition from chapters 2 to 3. Whilst earlier parts of the text emphasise the institutions that comprise the Australian industrial relations system, Chapter 9 shifts the readers focus to the workplace level, and asks them to consider workplace industrial relations policy, strategy and issues.

Chapters 10 and 11, respectively, provide the individual with knowledge of negotiation strategies and techniques, and the dispute resolution procedures available to them under Work Choices. The final section of the text is an appendix entitled “Industrial Relations and you”. This appendix attempts to prompt students to consider the basic information all working people should know, and need to know, if they are to understand and make informed choices about their own employment arrangements and instruments, starting with the seemingly simply question of “am I an employee?”. Given the ever increasing number of hours worked by the majority of tertiary students in support of their studies, and the lack of knowledge most appear to have in regard to most of the issues commonly dealt with in industrial relations subjects, the information and guidance provided in this appendix would make it seemingly invaluable!

In revising the text for the 2008 release of the seventh edition, all 11 chapters have been bought as up to date as possible, providing an excellent source of information in relation to the evolution of the Australian Industrial Relations system up to and including the operation of the Work Choices legislation, which came into effect in March 2006. An eighth edition likely to be needed to account for the changes introduced to the legal framework regulating industrial relations by the new federal Labor government, sooner rather than later. If there are other criticisms that can be directed at the text, they are both minor and few in number. Perhaps one criticism that can be leveled at the text, and this the seventh edition in particular, is that it fails to provide students with guidance in regard to extending their theoretical knowledge of the discipline if they so choose. The authors have opted not to provide a list of relevant references at the end of each chapter to which the engaged student can refer if they remain hungry for knowledge. The second criticism that can be levelled at the text is minor and relates to the failure of the writing team to update the majority of the numerous interviews and newspaper articles included in the text to provide students, according to its promotional material, “with a sense of the real‐world context in which industrial relations operates”.

Overall, the authors should be applauded for developing a text that as a result of its applied approach, equips the individual with the knowledge, skills and analytical tools needed to understand their own working arrangements.