(1991) Does Labour Have A Future?
Last week’s ACTU Congress was a public relations disaster. The media reporting of the congress concentrated on the decline in the representation of workers by the union movement.
Last week’s ACTU Congress was a public relations disaster. The media reporting of the congress concentrated on the decline in the representation of workers by the union movement.
In order to conceptualise what might exist beyond the process of restructuring, one must firstly identify what exactly is being restructured.
Prior to the major reforms undertaken in the 1980s under Labor, the accumulation of decades of regulation of the financial and import/export product markets effectively insulated Australian markets from external influences.
I begin by thanking the State Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the opportunity to present a union point of view to this seminar. There is a need for seminars such as this one to ensure that all users of the NSW industrial relations systems are aware of the options created by the new Industrial Arbitration (Enterprise Agreements) Amendment Act, 1990.
The Accord was originally negotiated between the then Federal opposition and the ACTU in March 1983 and it formed the basis for economic reform in Australia, once the Hawke Labor government was elected. For the first time in Australia’s history, traditional European concepts such as “corporatism” and “tripartitism” became central to the “economic jargon” of the period.
Interview by Diane Hague with Michael Easson, Secretary, NSW Labor Council on October 31, 1991 about the NSW Industrial Relations Bill, published in Education: journal of the N.S.W. Public School Teachers Federation, Vol. 72, No. 18, November 11, 1991, pp. 10-11.