Industrial conflict in paradise: Making the Bougainville copper project construction agreement 1970

Michael Hess and Ewan Maidment
Additional contact information
Michael Hess: UNSW, Australia
Ewan Maidment: The Australian National University, Australia

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2014, vol. 25, issue 2, 271-289

Abstract: In 1969, construction began on Conzinc Riotinto Australia’s huge copper and gold mine at Panguna on the island of Bougainville in what was then the Australian-administered Territory of Papua New Guinea. The mining project was unlike any Australians had previously undertaken, and its construction created complexities which Australian managers and industrial relations systems had not previously encountered. The complexity of employment relations on this project was increased by the political environment of colonial rule and the responses of Australian workers and unions. This article looks at the development of the first industrial agreement during the mine’s construction phase and places it in the context of the creation of a sustainable bargaining structure, which succeeded in mitigating industrial conflict for two decades before the outbreak of a wider armed conflict.

Keywords: Industrial relations; labour relations; trade unions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 J52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1035304614533625 (text/html)

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:sae:ecolab:v:25:y:2014:i:2:p:271-289

DOI: 10.1177/1035304614533625

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Labour Relations Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().