Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Review of the Fair Work Act announced

Yesterday, Bill Shorten as Commonwealth Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Financial Services and Superannuation announced a review of the Fair Work Act. This act governs industrial relations in Australia.

The review was foreshadowed at the time the legislation was originally introduced and will be conducted by Reserve Bank Board Member John Edwards, former Federal Court Judge, the Honourable Michael Moore and noted legal and workplace relations academic Professor Ron McCallum AO, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. If you follow the above link, you will find the terms of reference of the review.

In an opinion piece in today's National Times, former Treasurer Peter Costello takes a swipe at Europe over their failure to follow Australia's earlier industrial relations lead. I think that he is probably right in that lack of labour market flexibility has impeded structural adjustment within Europe. However, it's not as clear cut as that.   

I normally don't comment on industrial relations issues as such because I lack specialist expertise. I am also not especially interested in a day to day sense. Still, at some point it might be worthwhile providing a non-rigorous historical overview of the broad issues involved.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim just an idea: it would be nice on your sidebar to have some sort of "link dump" where anyone could drop a link for your possible interest.

The following is an example
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/21/fleeing-greeks-australian-gold-rush

Maybe a taste of things to come, but I note that right at the end is a depressing stat on just how few succeed.

Again, nothing to do with your present topic, but possibly worthy of thought. Sorry about that.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Hi kvd. Not quite sure how to make that suggestion work, but will have a fiddle.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jim

Of course, you might get more than you wish, on topics which don't interest! It was just a thought, so most definitely feel free to ignore.

I just feel silly dropping totally unrelated 'stuff' on your posts, and don't want to gum up your email.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Either email or unrelated comments are fine with me, kvd.