14 research outputs found
Political review April - June 1994. by Gwynneth Singleton
tag=1 data=Political review April - June 1994. by Gwynneth Singleton
tag=2 data=Singleton, Gwynneth
tag=3 data=Australian Quarterly,
tag=4 data=66
tag=5 data=3
tag=6 data=Spring 1994
tag=7 data=100-103.
tag=8 data=POLITICS
tag=10 data=Pre-election tips that the Territory election would be very close, including one from Green campaigner Bob Brown that the Green vote would determine the outcome, proved way off the mark.
tag=11 data=1995/1/2
tag=12 data=95/0107
tag=13 data=CABPre-election tips that the Territory election would be very close, including one from Green campaigner Bob Brown that the Green vote would determine the outcome, proved way off the mark
The Labour movement and incomes policy : origins and development of the accord
The Hawke Labor government was elected for its third term of office in 1987. It owes
much of this success to its Accord with the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The
purpose of this thesis is to elucidate what consolidates and sustains the bargained
bipartite relationship that is the core of the Accord and central to its viability as a cooperative
incomes strategy for the industrial and political wings of the Australian labour
movement.
The thesis begins with an examination of what the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party
and the ACTU each sought to achieve from a co-operative incomes policy. The following
chapters trace the origins and development of the Accord, beginning with the difficulties
that arose between the Whitlam Labor government and the ACTU that prevented any
similar agreement. The post-Whitlam period brought about a change in attitude by both
the unions and the FPLP that made the Accord possible. The thesis examines the reasons
why Australian unions changed their approach from maintaining living standards
primarily through nominal increases to the industrial wage to embrace a collective
centralised incomes strategy that included the industrial wage, employment and the
social wage. The effective point of wage negotiation then lay with the ACTU. This thesis
examines the basis of ACTU wages policy and the reasons why the strategies that were
pursued to gain its implementation failed. This failure led directly to the Accord with
the FPLP. The following two chapters examine the reasons why and how the FPLP
reached similar conclusions about the necessity for a collective incomes policy with the
unions in 1979 and the subsequent negotiations that brought them to formal agreement
on the Accord with the ACTU in 1983.
The Accord has proved to be a flexible process that remains relevant nearly six years
after its inception. The operations and renegotiations of the Accord that have occurred
over this period are examined to determine why this has been possible. A discussion
about the relevance of corporatism to the Accord follows. This concludes that, while
there may be some aspects of corporatism that can be related to the Accord process, the
imprecise nature of corporatist theory raises doubts about its utility as an explanation
for the bargained bipartite relationship that is the essence of the Accord. It is suggested
that it is more satisfactory to regard the Accord as a contemporary embodiment of
traditional Australian labourism; that is, the balancing of economic, electoral and social
objectives by the trade union movement and the ALP to achieve what is politically and
economically possible through Labor in government