Throughout the lead up to the 2007 federal election, one issue more than any other dominated political debate and media attention: industrial relations, and specifically the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation, aimed squarely at reducing union power and influence and encouraging employers to pursue non-union employment contracts, chiefly Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). How did Australia get to this juncture? One key factor most certainly has been the apparent effectiveness of one company – Rio Tinto – in introducing and maintaining non-union employment arrangements throughout most of its Australian operations. So successful have they been, that other companies – including the Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, Qantas and virtually all employers in the metalliferous mining sector – have since adopted the template for de-unionisation developed and applied so effectively by Rio Tinto. To understand how and why such radical employer strategies were developed and implemented, and therefore how this experience has encouraged conservative government’s to lend political and legislative support for such initiatives, it is necessary to step back in time, to a period when such anti-union behaviour was considered radical or ‘maverick’.

Why is the CRA/Rio Tinto story so important? Firstly, it represents the clearest and most successful example of an apparent conscious management strategy of de-unionisation witnessed in Australia. Secondly, the company strategy is strongly based on a theoretical footing, itself a rather unique circumstance. Thirdly, the scale of the company’s operations, enables cross sectoral comparisons to be made. Fourthly, the existence of different unions operating across the metalliferous and black coal sectors enables the relationship between management and union strategies to be investigated. Finally, the general effectiveness of CRA/Rio Tinto’s employment relations strategy over the past 20 years is seen to have provided a template for management inspired de-unionisation policies, since adopted by other major companies, but more importantly, underpinning the radical direction of industrial relations reforms introduced by the Howard government.

Dr Bruce Hearn Mackinnon is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Deakin University and a regular contributor on employer matters in the Journal of Industrial Relations. He previously worked as an official of the Building Workers Industrial Union (NSW), as an economist with the Commonwealth Treasury in Canberra, in between several years as a full time rock musician.

Contents
From CRA to Rio

Theoretical Foundations /Justifications

The NZAS Experiment: Promise of Things to Come

Hamersley Iron: How the West Was Lost

Comalco: War on all Fronts

Black Coal: Management Meets its Match

Hunter Valley No. 1 Mine: Turning the Tide

Conclusions.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
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Mackinnon, Bruce Hearn

Behind work choices: how one company changed Australia’s industrial relations system

   Bibliography

   Includes index

      ISBN 978-1-920889-20-3 (paper back)

      ISBN 978-1-920889-21-0 (hard cover)

   1. Australia. Parliament. Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005.

   2. Industrial relations – Australia.

   3. Labour laws and legislation – Australia.  I. Title

344.9401

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