Participative Workplace Change in an Australian Context 87 

This section now moves to discuss workplace change in an Australian context and then more specifically, in the Australian HE context. Organisational and technological change in Australian workplaces in all industries during the last 20 years has been considerable and has occurred against a backdrop of changing industrial relations policy and legislation through the workplace reforms of the Labor Governments of the 1980s and the Coalition Government of the 1990s until 2007 (Kaye, 1999; Allen et al 2007). Other key forces have included globalisation, benchmarking, technological developments and economic conditions which have necessitated widespread organisational change across all industries. The nature of this change and its impact on Australian workplaces was described by Kaye (1999) who observed that: ‘the pace of change with respect to social, political and economic environment experienced by many Australian organisations has increased the level of complexity that needs to be managed’ (1999:582).

During the industrial relations reforms of the federal Labor Government in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a move from a centralised wage fixing system and a national industrial relation scene to a more localised and workplace focussed industrial relations environment. This resulted in a move away from an industry wide approach to an enterprise based approach to workplace change (Bair and McGrath- Champ, 1998; Kaye, 1999; Lansbury, 2000). Kaye (1999) argued that the move to decentralised enterprise bargaining would see the workplace operate as the vehicle for much of the future change that was to occur, and made the point however that moving from an industry wide to an enterprise level approach needed more that just a reframing of approaches and rather a fundamental revision of workplace practices aligned to unique enterprise or local level issues. In other words the nature of individual workplaces would now be the focus for their own change management and industrial relations agenda rather than the wider industry issues.

The emphasis on improving productivity and increasing the efficiency of the workplace emerged in an Australian context during the late 1980s as part of the process of award restructuring and the move to enterprise bargaining. The National

Wage case of 1988 saw the establishment of the ‘structural efficiency principle’ which: ‘encouraged the parties to identify new ways of working to increase productivity that went beyond removing restrictive work practices’ (Smith et al, 1995:23).

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) was instrumental in bringing about legislative changes that facilitated workplace-based bargaining. The BCAs workplace reform agenda focussed on the individualisation of the employment relationship through contracts and the devolution of arbitration and conciliation to the level of the workplace which in turn sought to weaken or negate the role of unions or industrial tribunals (Bennett, 1994).

The BCA argued that the flexibility that would arise from these reforms would enhance the efficiency and productivity of the industry and that it would bring about changes at the workplace level that generated increased demand for skilled and autonomous workers. The result was arguably to facilitate an environment favourable to employers. Government policies have boosted employer power at the same time as removing power from individuals through de-institutionalisation and deregulation of the labour market (Peetz, 2006).

The nature of workplace change within Australia undertook a further dramatic shift with the election of the Howard coalition government in 1996 and the introduction of the Workplace Relations Act (1996). Lansbury (2000) provided a concise overview of the nature of shift in these political changes on the Australian workplace:

The process of enterprise bargaining was begun by the Hawke Labor government in the late 1980s, with the co-operation of the union movement, as an attempt to decentralise the employment relations system. More radical reforms have been introduced by the Howard government since the mid 1990s designed to individualise the employment relationship and reduce union involvement (2000:29).

The Howard government set about an industrial relations reform agenda that culminated in the introduction of ‘Workchoices’ through the Workplace Relations

Amendment Act (2005). Core to the focus of the government’s industrial relations agenda was the move to an individualised approach to the workplace. Individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), had been introduced under the federal Workplace Relations Act, 1996. AWAs allowed employers and employees to negotiate directly on an individual basis. Under the Workchoices regime they were heralded as becoming the primary employment instrument despite controversial research showing that wage rises under AWAs have been found to be significantly lower than those obtained under unionised bargaining (Roan, Bramble and Lafferty, 2001).

Terms and conditions of AWAs were also generally harsher than those found in union agreements. For instance a greater prevalence of weekly working hours over 38 in AWAs compared with collective agreements (28.8 per cent compared to 11.8 per cent respectively) and AWAs were more likely to contain provisions which reduce payment for non-standard working hours and were less likely to contain provisions for training and staff development (Roan et al, 2001). Peetz (2001:9) argued that the low wage outcomes for recipients of AWAs was indicative of their ‘inherently weaker bargaining position, and inherently weaker power, than employees under collective bargaining’.

The individualised focus on the workplace associated with the industrial relations changes of the Howard government also challenged the concept of taking a collective approach to the management of workplace change. Whilst these changes swept across all industries, the introduction of the Higher Education Workplace Reform Requirements (HEWRRs) in the HE sector was to bring about some radical reforms in a highly collective workforce.