E
DITORIAL
It is sometimes argued that industrial relations is in decline. Certainly, in Aus-tralian terms, the enactment of the Workplace Relations Act 1996was a radical attempt to accelerate the move towards an individualised model of employment regulation and in the process to expunge the term industrial relations. Similarly, the rise of human resources management is often presented as a threat to industrial relations, particularly among industrial relations scholars (e.g. Plowman 1989: 4). Proponents of human resources managemant have argued that its concerns are more clearly focused on the workplace than is the case with industrial relations scholarship (Lansbury & Michelson 2003: 222, 235). Despite these considerable challenges, industrial relations scholarship continues to thrive, and this is amply demonstrated by the papers which form this issue.
This collection rests on the premise that a hallmark of industrial relations schol-arship is the changing and diverse topics of research. In Australia this is evident in the work of the founders of the field, such as Higgins (1915) and Foenander (1959). Although it is not unexpected that the research agenda should be chang-ing, two enduring features of industrial relations scholarship are: (i) a concern with pressing policy issues which impinge on the employment relationship; and (ii) an eclecticism, sometimes referred to as multidisciplinarity, which draws read-ily from the disciplines of economics, law, organisational behaviour and politics. In our view this continuity amidst change is a source of vigour which ensures the continuing relevance of industrial relations scholarship. This collection of papers is intended to highlight the changing and vigorous agenda of industrial relations research.
The first two papers in this collection highlight the impact of employer strategy and globalisation on employees. The Swedish multinational Electrolux is the focus of Lambert, Gillan and Fitzgerald, though arguably this insight into globalisation is not unique. Although Electrolux may be a ‘good citizen’ at home, its global strategies have been manifested in its opportunistic use of the provisions of the Workplace Relations Actto assist it in recasting the Australian whitegoods industry and in the process to undermine union organisation. The rise of non-standard employment has received increasing attention by industrial relations scholars, however, typically their concerns focus on the increasing insecurity of workers who are at the lower end of the occupational hierarchy. McKeown, however, shifts our focus to the rise of contract employment among groups such as engineers and IT professionals. She demonstrates that the concept of precariousness is of wider application, but the process of classification is not simple. It is better understood in terms of individual job histories.
The importance of public policy to industrial relations scholarship is underlined by Peetz’s careful discussion of retrenchment and labour market disadvantage. Fittingly this paper was prompted by recent test cases in which industrial tribunals have been called on to consider redundancy benefits for older workers. Although
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this paper focuses on analysing labour market data, it also lays the basis for a simple yet effective critique of the decision of the Queensland and Australian industrial relations commissions in relation to older retrenched workers and long term casuals.
Two papers in this collection deal with issues which at first glance appear to be outside the scope of industrial relations. Brown and her colleagues give a new twist to the perennial issue of the ‘frontier of control’ by considering the impact of net-worked organisations on the relations between labour and management. Through the lens of a public sector case study, we see that information and communication technology makes these new organisational forms possible, but at the same time raises the ‘possibility of a self-directed and empowered workforce, or the reloca-tion of the locus of control, with either new forms of managerial control or with peers at the level of the team’. The second of these issues, workplace drug testing is novel, in that the concerns of management have extended beyond the conse-quences of intoxication to embrace a wider range of drugs which might impair performance, even when consumed well in advance of work periods. Using a case study to explore themes identified in the literature, Holland and his colleagues demonstrate that the complexity of this problem is such that it is most effec-tively addressed by involving all the workplace stakeholders. Approaches based on management prerogative are unsatisfactory.
Another enduring issue is industrial relations in the public sector, however, over recent decades it is the public service where the practice of industrial re-lations has been the most under threat. Although the reforms introduced under the rubric of the New Public Management have not been directly targeted at industrial relations, this is an almost inevitable outcome of the introduction of private sector management practices, for example, human resources management into the Australian Public Service. Using the Australian Taxation Office as a focal point, Anderson, Teicher and Griffin consider the impact of the reform process on industrial relations. Although limited in its generalisability, it is notable that the character of core public sector functions appears to presage an incomplete transition from industrial relations to workplace relations.
REFERENCES
Foenander O (1959)Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration in Australia. Sydney: Law Book Co. of Australia.
Higgins HB (1915) A new province for law and order.Harvard Law Review, 29 (15): 13–39. Lansbury RD, Michelson, G (2003) Industrial relations in Australia. In: Ackers P, Wilkinson A,
eds,Understanding Work and Employment: Industrial Relations in Transition. pp. 227–41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plowman D. (1989)Industrial Relations Teaching and Research: Trends, Pressures, Strategies. Presi-dential Address delivered to 4th Biennial AIRAANZ Conference. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 1–4 February.
Julian Teicher and Peter Holland
