An outline of the lew labour law in Australia: importance for North Queensland

[Extract] What is the change and why is it important? • Essentially, Australian IR has moved in stages: • A prescriptive system of collective bargaining and adherence to Industrial Commission principles (1900-1980s); • through to a hybrid system, in which there were prescriptive safety nets but also collective bargaining at an enterprise level sanctioned by the Industrial Commission (No Disadvantage Test) (1980s-1996); • a system like the above, only in which statutory individual agreements (Australian Workplace Agreements) also evolved (1996-2005); • through to Work Choices - in which collective bargaining was wound back in favour of AWAs, the role of the Commission (eg NOT) diminished and unfair dismissal became largely unavailable; national system; reliance on statutory minima (2005-2008); and now • The Fair Work Legislation in which the move towards individual bargaining is replaced by collective bargaining at workplaces but underpinned less by a centralised Commission and more by statutory standards (incrementally from 2008-