Reinforcing managerial prerogative in the Australian Public Service during the COVID-19 pandemic

Cameron Roles, Sukanya Ananth and Michael O’Donnell

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2022, vol. 33, issue 1, 18-36

Abstract: Over several decades Liberal-National Governments have encouraged Australian Public Service (APS) employers to uphold managerial prerogative by offering individual employment arrangements to employees. During the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Morrison Liberal-National Government’s Workplace Bargaining Policy reinforced this agenda. In place of collective bargaining, APS agency heads were encouraged to determine pay rises and new employment conditions for employees using Section 24 of the Public Service Act ( PS Act) 1999. Workplace determinations did not need to be negotiated with public sector unions and some 85,500 employees across 57 APS agencies, or approximately 63% of the APS workforce, had accepted pay increases via workplace determinations by 31 December 2020. The widespread adoption of workplace determinations in the APS poses significant challenges for public sector unions and for the future of APS collective bargaining. JEL Codes J21, J45, J53, K31.

Keywords: Individualisation; managerial prerogative; workplace determinations; collective bargaining; public sector unions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10353046221077715 (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:33:y:2022:i:1:p:18-36

DOI: 10.1177/10353046221077715

Access Statistics for this article

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