'Exit stage left', now 'centre stage': Collective bargaining under work choices and fair work

This chapter examines the changing fortunes of collective bargaining under Australian labour law, focusing primarily on the period since Work Choices. In the early 1990s, enterprise-level bargaining emerged from the shadows of Australia's traditional conciliation and arbitration system, as an important component of the labour market reforms of the Keating Government. While retaining the essence of Labor's bargaining system, the Howard Coalition Government's 1996 legislative changes challenged the primacy of collective bargaining, primarily through the introduction of statutory individual agreements - but also through the removal of the 'good faith bargaining' (GFB) obligations introduced only three ye~rs earlier. The 2005 Work Choices legislation further downgraded collechve bargaining at the expense of individualised agreement-making, leading Forsyth and Sutherland to express the view that: 'the prospects for longevity of a robust system of collective determination of workers' wages and employment conditions have never been more bleak'.