Changing Australian labour market

What is industrial relations?

The relationship between employees and employers

What is a trade union?

A trade union is an association of workers that aims to advance the interests of its members by improving their wages and working conditions.

What is the main aim of a trade union?

The main role for unions is to represent their members’ interests by negotiating wage increases

reasons for the decline of participation in unions?

Changes in wage determination, changes within industries, changes in the Nature of employment

What is an award?

An award is a document that sets out minimum terms and conditions for a particular job, 

What are the advantages to an award?

protects workers from being exploited, covers all employment for similar jobs, offer minimum pay and conditions

What are the problems with an award?

inflexible, they may prevent individual initiative.

What is an enterprise agreement?

An Enterprise agreement is a workplace agreement that is directly negotiates between an employer and a group of employees (usually represented by a union)

What are the positives to an enterprise agreement?

Very flexible for the employers, groups have more power than individual contracts, powerful unions can negotiate well, employees can negotiate productivity increases for wage increases

What is a common law contract?

A common law contract cover people who are not covered by awards or enterprise agreements

What are the advantages to a common law contract?

flexible, individual can negotiate, cant be worse than an award, reworded for individual initiative

What are the negatives to a common law contract?

some groups in society may have trouble negotiating (migrants)