Unpaid Entitlement Recovery in the Federal Industrial Relations System: Strategy and Outcomes 1952-95

Despite awards and industrial agreements providing legally binding conditions of employment, many Australian employees do not always secure their employment entitlements. The inspection and prosecution strategies adopted by or forced upon the agency tasked with monitoring and enforcing the regulations are a key factor affecting whether or not employees will recover monies owed from non-compliant employers. This article examines the outcomes of different inspection and prosecution regimes between 1952 and 1995 in the Australian federal industrial relations system, and makes three points. The first is that employer evasion of employee entitlements has been significant, and sustained. Second, the shift from routine inspections to a complaints-based inspection strategy has reduced the probability of detection and subsequently encourages employer evasion. Third, the use of prosecution as a tool of `last resort' has provided little deterrence to employer non-compliance. The extent of evasion in a centralized industrial relations system raises questions about evasion in decentralized systems

Market and spillover forces in wage award determination in Australia: 1986 to 1997

This paper examines the role of market and spillover forces in wage award determination in Australia. The results show, consistent with other similar studies, that wage awards are only weakly related to market forces. In the period studied (1986 to 1997) spillover forces emerge as the dominant determinant of award wage adjustments. The results thus provide some empirical evidence for phenomenon such as wage rigidity.