The Challenges of a Representation Gap: Australian Experiments in Promoting Industrial Citizenship

• Author: Troy Sarina
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12008
• Date: 01 January 2013
• Published date: 01 January 2013

The Challenges of a Representation Gap:

Australian Experiments in Promoting Industrial

Citizenship

TROY SARINA*

This paper examines the concept of industrial citizenship and explores how collec-

tive bargaining laws have been used in Australia in an attempt to enhance worker

participation. Utilizing negotiation theory, this paper argues that there is a high level

of convergence between a mutual gains approach to negotiation and legislated codes

of collective bargaining based on principles of good faith. In conclusion this paper

suggests that establishing a legal framework of collective bargaining that incorpo-

rates a mutual gains approach to negotiating remains an important foundation for

shaping the way institutional actors interact with each other.

Introduction

AT PRESENT,AUSTRALIA’S INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE IS UNDERGOING A RADICAL

TRANSFORMATION. On the one hand, Australia is experiencing a “representation

gap”(Heery 2009). Trade union coverage has been continually declining

since the 1980s and has stagnated to approximately 19 percent of the Aus-

tralian workforce (ABS, 2009). However, despite this decline in traditional

forms of worker collectivism, the current Australian government remains

committed to using collective bargaining at the enterprise level as the pri-

mary vehicle for delivering productivity and f‌lexibility gains to secure Aus-

tralia’s international competiveness. The pivotal role that collective

bargaining plays in allowing nation states to remain competitive has long

been recognized (Collins 2003). Furthermore, collective bargaining has been

used to promote greater “industrial citizenship”whereby workers are

informed, consulted, and participate in decisions that affect organizational

performance and the terms of the employment relationship (Owens, Riley,

and Murray 2011; Poole, Lansbury, and Wailes 2011). This raises a number

of key research questions:

* The author’saff‌iliation is Department of Marketing and Management, Macquarie University, NSW,

Sydney, Australia. E-mail: troy.sarina@mq.edu.au.

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1. With the emergence of the representation gap, is collective bar-

gaining still an effective way of enhancing industrial citizenship in

modern day organizations?

2. Does the collective bargaining framework enshrined in the Fair

Work Act 2009 (Cth) deliver greater levels of industrial citizenship

and if so, how has this been achieved?

This article argues that the federal government has incorporated a “mutual

gains”approach to collective bargaining into federal collective bargaining laws

via the inclusion of an obligation for parties to bargain in good faith. The

government hopes these types of reforms will deliver greater involvement of

all types of workers (union or non‐union) in the determination of working con-

ditions and productivity gains. This overhaul of federal workplace laws has

been an attempt to more effectively balance the competing goals of enhancing

workplace equity and productivity. However, an early assessment of these

reforms suggests legislating for a change in bargaining behaviors to secure

greater industrial citizenship in the collective bargaining process may be more

diff‌icult than the government anticipated.

Industrial Citizenship: A Unique Form of Employee Voice

By way of introduction to this article, some consideration needs to be

given to what is meant by the term industrial citizenship. In essence, this con-

cept is borne out of literature relating to employee voice, which has a “com-

plex and uneven set of meanings and purposes”(Dundon et al. 2004).

However, at its core, employee voice is a term used to explain how a group

of employees engage with management to discuss terms and conditions that

govern their employment (Taras 2006). Consequently, employee voice mecha-

nisms can range from suggestion boxes to collective bargaining arrangements

that act as formal, institutionalized “two-way voice mechanisms between man-

agement and employees”aimed at delivering a more inclusive process of

decision making at the enterprise level (Gomez, Bryson, and Willman 2010).

Industrial citizenship relies on these themes of inclusiveness and suggests

that the law can be used to provide workers with certain rights which ensure

they actively participate in decisions that affect the operations of the organiza-

tion and the determination of working conditions. This ref‌lects the concepts of

employee voice developed by Boroff and Lewin (1997) who suggest that the

law plays a pivotal role in determining the level of power that employees have

to inf‌luence bargaining decisions made via institutionalized forms of employee

voice such as collective bargaining. Historically, workers have been able to

398 / TROY SARINA