INTER-WAR WAGE MOVEMENTS AND TRADE UNION MILITANCY IN AUSTRALIA.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hitherto unexplored relationship between wage movements (&Wring;) and trade union militancy (TUM) during the inter-war period. This study is seen as an adjunct to my two post-war studies of wage movements and trade union activity in Australia, see [18] and [19]. Briefly the post-war studies revealed a strong positive relationship between TUM and wage movements in Australia. Further, the level of TUM seems to be systematically related to fluctuations in the level of unemployment and the rate of change in prices. This study reaches similar conclusions for the interwar period. The structure of the paper is as follows: section II presents a model that ties in wage movements with TUM while section III presents some empirical estimates of the model. Conclusions follow in section IV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]