Employee participation: some Autralian cases

The 1983 Accord between the ruling Australian Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions created a favourable framework for employee participation, further strengthened by recent National Wage Decisions. Yet the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey of 1991 revealed that management-employee consultation remains sporadic on most issues. While the five cases reported here, taken from both the private and public sectors, show that there are some very advanced and apparently successful forms of participation, Australian management generally remains cautious about entering into formal consultative arrangements at the workplace level. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)