Enterprise Bargaining and Regional Prospects: The Effects of Rescaling Wage Regulation in Australia

Susan McGrath-Champ
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Susan McGrath-Champ: University of Sydney

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2005, vol. 26, issue 3, 413-442

Abstract: This article explores disparities emerging under localized collective (‘enterprise’) bargaining in Australia, and relates these to regional economic prospects. The purpose is to highlight how, driven by a rhetoric of globalization and international competitiveness, the ‘rescaling’ of wage regulation is recasting workers’ well-being and shifting the politics of regional development. This is situated in the context of growing cross-disciplinary dialogue concerning the spatiality of labour (industrial) relations. With the effects of the first decade of enterprise bargaining becoming discernible, the article considers the longer-term influence of increasing wage disparity produced by spatially disaggregated wage setting. The article backgrounds regional economic development in Australia, noting the heritage of a near-century of centralized wage institutions as a possible contributor to the very pronounced metropolitan primacy that has been established in this country. It questions whether increasing geographical wage disparity in Australia will act as a catalyst to rural and regional viability. The challenge for labour is to anticipate, find and create appropriate scales of action that can counter these outcomes.

Keywords: industrial relations; labour geography; regional disparities; spatial theory; wage bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:26:y:2005:i:3:p:413-442

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X05054742

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