There is general agreement that the economy is in slump. There is also general agreement that the slump is the product of macroeconomic policy. In an attempt to redress the adverse balance of payments public policy has dampened economic activity through tight fiscal and monetary policy. The need to contain the growth in imports will have a vital bearing on the economic growth facilitated by public policy in the short and medium term. The paper details the factors determining the appropriate levels of growth in the short term which will enable a “soft” landing for the economy. However, the paper doubts that this “soft” landing will be achieved. The paper also examines the longer term prospects. It argues that, given the appropriate policy framework, a period of prosperity is achievable.

The major focus of contemporary industrial relations is award restructuring. This restructuring, with its potential to facilitate a better skilled, more flexible and more efficient workforce is integrally related to the National Wage determining process and the ACTU-ALP Accord. It is also a key to international competitiveness and the wellbeing of the manufacturing sector. In recent years the wage determination process has attempted to reduce those normative forces which industrial tribunals have institutionalized — in particular comparative wage justice and real wage maintenance. This attempt has created a number of tensions: control versus flexibility; cost of living versus productivity; centralism versus decentralism; paid rates versus minimum rates; supplementary payments versus over award payments; equity versus efficiency. The system’s capacity to resolve these tensions without merely returning to established wage settlement practices will determine the efficacy of the restructuring exercise. It will also shape the contours of industrial relations for the next decade.

The Australian economy has increasingly come under the influence of international factors. This has placed greater pressures on Australian businesses to be more competitive. This requires changes in both management and union practices, and changes in the institutional arrangements in which industrial relations are conducted. The paper argues the case for the general movement to enterprise bargaining. This will necessitate a major overhauling of bargaining structures and of trade union and employer association structures and practices. The award restructuring brought about by National Wage Case decisions provides but a preliminary step in the movement to an enterprise focus which will be critical to internationally competitive industries.

Government policy has sought to counter a deteriorating current account deficit by a regime of high interest rates. This paper analyses this policy prescription and argues that less reliance on monetary policy is essential for containing external debt.

The Accord has been a feature of the Labor Government's economic and industrial relations management since 1983. It has had both its critics and supporters. The paper assesses the Accord on a number of economic and non-economic criteria.

In the past decade there has been a retreat from full employment and a fundamental change in the labour market away from physical production work and towards the service sector. There have been changes in the structure of industry and the workforce, and changes in arrangements under which work is performed. There is emerging a secondary or marginal labour market in which both full-time and casual, temporary and part-time workers are confronted with a situation where they are required to decide whether or not to enter work arrangements geared to the flexible organisational needs of the business enterprise rather than their own needs. Tensions between employer demands for flexibility, and for a largely unregulated use of the workforce, and employee concern to ensure job security and minimal protection in employment (including health and safety) means that employment law today has to respond to organizational relationships in determining whether or not to intervene between the parties to new work arrangements. The question is whether or not the principles of traditional employment law are flexible enough to become the legal framework of a technological society.

This paper examines the defeat of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) in the 1989 pilots’ dispute in terms of strategic inertia. In challenging the Government, the Commission, the ACTU and the airlines over the wage fixation guidelines the AFAP failed to take full account of the current industrial relations context. A successful attempt by the Federation to achieve increases outside the indexation buidelines in 1977–78 ever one of the significant examples of AFAP strength in past campaigns which may have led the Federation leadership to emulate previous strategies. The AFAP thus limited consideration of tactical options in 1989. Its reaction to legal action initiated by the airlines was to organise the mass resignation of members, weakening its bargaining position. Both US air traffic controllers in their 1984 dispute and the AFAP maintained inflexible courses, ignoring every opportunity to retreat and regoup in the face of major defeats. In contrast, Qantas pilots and Australian Air Traffic Controllers gained significant salary increases within the guidelines. Having lost exclusive coverage of pilots, the Federation’s future may now be dependent on closer links with the trade union movement and amalgamation.

The Trade Union movement enters the 1990s at the height of its political strength. The Accord relationship has proved to be flexible enough to accommodate the political and economic needs of both Accord partners. The trade union movement’s strategy for the 1990s has been formulated within the protective umbrella of the Accord.

The trade union movement has both a vision of the future and an ambitious set of strategies aimed at securing its position within Australian society. The key challenge facing the movement is the reversal of the decline in trade union participation rates. Trade union amalgamation leading to the creation of 20 large efficient union federations will generate scale economies which will free up resources for recruitment campaigns and additional services.

The strategy of the trade union movement requires critical examination in the light of structural changes to the economy, the diversity of the labour market and new management approaches to human resource management. These factors require that unions adopt a number of diverse strategies to secure the future of the union movement. New and more decentralised union structures may be required to unionise workers in non-traditional areas. The union movement needs to constantly review its strategies to ensure they remain relevant to changing realities.