meal breaks;
leave of various types—including recreation, sick, and long service;
loading and allowances;
special rates for dangerous or piecework;
employment, grievance, and termination procedures;
career structures;
superannuation.By the 1980s, many (most) awards had become very complex and detailed.
For instance, the Metal, Engineering and Associated Industries Award 1998
had over 300 classifications, each with different rates of pay and conditions of
work (AIRC 1998).
7.2 The System Crashes
The industrial relations system appeared to be working to many people’ssatis-
faction, particularly unions and big business, until the system was severely
tested and its inherent problems exposed in the face of international crisis.
The events of the mid to late 1970s presented a massive challenge to the
Australian economy, based as it was on protecting itself from the ill-winds of
international competition and the vagaries of a free-market economy. The
shock to many developed economies, including Australia, known as the‘oil
shock(s)’, demanded far-reaching changes in economic management, includ-
ing falls in real wages. However, what eventuated was a series of wage explo-
sions which spread, due to the centralized system, throughout the Australian
economy, largely due to the industrial muscle of unions under the leadership
of the then Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president, Bob Hawke.
Inflation reached over 17 per cent in 1975 and the unemployment rate rose
from 2 per cent to over 6 per cent. A further wages explosion in 1978–1980,
again under Bob Hawke’s leadership, this time impacted most on unemploy-
ment, which rose to over 10 per cent.
It is generally recognized that Australia’s previous regime of centralized
wage bargaining and one of its major planks—indexation of wage rises to
changes in the consumer price index (CPI)—was a major reason for the
perpetuation of inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s.
7.3 The First Attempt at Change: Hawke and Keating
Somewhat ironically it was Bob Hawke, the Labor prime minister from 1983 to
1991, who, in 1983, used the system of compulsory arbitration, with the
Australia’s Industrial Relations Singularity