Law Commons^™

Industrial Tribunals And The Regulation Of Bargaining, Andrew D. Frazer

Andrew Frazer

This chapter seeks to apply ‘new’ regulation theory to industrial tribunals, in par-ticular the functions and powers of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) in relation to enterprise bargaining and the making of collec-tive workplace agreements. In a conventional economic sense, industrial tribunals have always been regulatory agencies, with their awards operating as labour standards setting minimum pay and conditions. Since the 1990s, though, the major work and impact of industrial tribunals has changed from making awards to the facilitation and approval of agreements as part of the process of labour market “deregulation.” As (at the time of final revision …