Should Australia Copy U.S. Employee Relations Practices?

George Strauss

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley

Abstract: As Australia debates the possibility of major changes in its labor laws, I am told that there are those who argue it should copy elements of the American system. How weird! While I love my country I never thought of it as a model of good labor relations. But based on the assumption that American experience has some relevance, this paper consists of three parts. The first describes recent developments in American employee relations broadly conceived (not just union-management relations). After all, if you want to copy U.S. practices you should know what they are. Next I comment briefly on one major but perhaps insufficiently recognized difference between our countries’ labor relations: the U.S. is more legalistic. The final section deals specifically at some proposed changes in Australian labor law, supposedly suggested by American practice, though this practice may be misunderstood.

Date: 2008-07-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6qz3h89d.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:indrel:qt6qz3h89d

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().