The ìPetty Pilfering of Minutesî or What has Happened to the Length of the Working Day in Australia?

The acceleration of decentralised bargaining, the weakening of the award system and the erosion of the regulatory framework protecting hours of work is part of a new managerial offensive aimed at dismantling standardised working time and drive down costs. Under the guise of progressive ìflexibilityî, hard-won protective standards and conditions around working time are being eroded and increasingly replaced with individualised arrangements all designed to intensify work. These new arrangements can be described as the ìmanagerialisationî1 of working time; and are having profound implications for the durationand distribution of working hours, the scheduling of working hours and the pace of work. Significantly, the eight hour day seems a quaint phenomenon of the past. This paper examines the emerging phenomenon of the longer workday and in particular, the 12 hour workday and the impact of decentralised bargaining