For more than a decade, employer-driven changes in work organization have been spreading in all industrialized countries. The changes often involved greater opportunities given to workers at shopfloor for participating in work-related decision-making as individuals or as groups of employees. Debates among researchers and practitioners on such development tend, however, not to be well focused, due to the ambiguity surrounding such direct participation. This paper therefore attempts to clarify the various forms of direct participation, the objectives they seek to attain as well as their effectiveness. The author also calls for greater union role in the regulation of direct participation.

The past decade witnessed a wide range of industrial relations reforms in Australia. Employee participation and industrial democracy was espoused by the Labor government (1983–96) as a key element in its workplace reform program. It was also embraced by the trade union movement and, to a lesser extent, by leading employers and their associations. A case study of employee participation in the Ford Motor Company is used to illustrate the process of workplace reform in Australia during this period While Ford Australia provides a positive example of workplace change, it is argued that the promise of employee participation has not generally been fulfilled in Australian industry. Contributing factors identified in the paper include economic recession, the decline of trade union membership and a lack of ‘people’ skills in managerial ranks.

Employee representation in decisions affecting work organisation in the UK has traditionally been handled through collective bargaining although the reluctance of employers to negotiate such issues, combined with the reactive and economistic nature of decentralised unions has limited the scope and significance of such bargaining. In the 1980s the decline of collective bargaining, with no growth in effective alternative means of employee representation, reduced this already limited involvement. At the same time employer strategies were directed at recovering unilateral control over work organisation in their drive for flexibility. A case study of a major bank reveals employer indifference or hostility to significant union involvement in work reorganisation and serious union problems in translating general national policies on job protection and technological change into effective bargaining strategies. A conclusion suggests that a stronger voice for employees can only come via guaranteed rights with companies, which may require legislative action.

In the United States, as in other advanced industrial countries, worker participation in management has taken on increasing importance, placing pressures on employers and unions to change how they deal with employees/members, and with each other. This paper examines two of the most impressive cases in the U.S.: the partnerships between General Motors (G.M.) and the United Autoworkers union (U.A.W.) at Saturn and between BellSouth and the Communication Workers union (C.W.A.). We outline the evolution and the basic features of these innovations, as well as highlighting certain ongoing problems. These problems, we argue, confront the parties to employment relations in the U.S. more generally, reflecting profound ambivalence about such experiments, and their continued isolation as ‘islands of excellence’. As such, these cases both illustrate the vast potential for labor-management partnerships as well as the dampening effect of the employment relations context in the U.S.

Retrenchment is a significant element of current labour restructuring in Australia. This article situates retrenchment and the experiences of retrenchees since the late 1980s within a broader context of labour market flows. The article refers to labour flows at the level of the individual enterprise but it concentrates on the aggregate level ofthe national economy, drawing mainly on official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. It points to several important factors that are neglected in contemporary discussion of the experience of retrenchment — the effects of periods of job expansion and job contraction, industry patterns of retrenchment and labour turnover, enterprise-level retrenchment and recruitment practices, and the place of ‘precarious’ employment as an increasingly significant point of departure and destination in labour flows.

This paper examines the arguments for the privatisation of airports in Australia. The general arguments for privatisation are evaluated and found not to be universally applicable. There is no a priori argument in that all activities operate optimally in the private sector. Rather, the costs and benefits of each particular case need to be examined. This is then done with respect to airports. Firstly, the question of whether airports should be operated as networks or as individual optimizing entities is considered. It is shown that with respect to both pricing and investment decisions, efficiency requires retention of the network. Due to the nature of the product, the market will not deliver an efficient, competitive outcome. In this light the specifics of the Australian privatization proposals are examined, and found wanting. The case for privatization of airports is extremely weak.

This paper identifies a model of enterprise bargaining which has recently been advocated by some Australian employer groups. Under this ‘autonomous enterprise’model, ‘genuine’ enterprise bargaining is supposed to produce comprehensive agreements which set terms and conditions of employment which are company-specific. The experience of enterprise bargaining in the Australian domestic airline industry is then compared with that model. It is found that, contrary to the model, the two major airlines have negotiated enterprise agreements which are remarkably similar, with wage increases and workplace reforms following strong industry-wide trends. The explanation offered for the lack of enterprise autonomy focuses on both institutional factors and structural features of the industry’s product

The 1995 Congress was unusual. It was considerably shorter than all recent Congresses and there was only one substantial policy item: the recruitment and retention of union members. Nonetheless, the Congress provided the platform for important speeches from government and ACTU leaders. These reaffirmed the Accord process and, with an election looming, contrasted it with the Opposition’s approach. The Congress also provided for a smooth transition, with Jennie George endorsed as President-elect to replace Martin Ferguson on his anticipated departure to Federal Parliament.