Compare and Contrast the Government Reforms in Australian Employment Essay

Compare and Contrast the Government Reforms in Australian Employment Relations since 1993 - Essay Example The reforms have made significant impacts on the growth in the knowledge and service sectors of the economy, the shift towards more precarious works, deregulation, competitiveness and individualism and emergence of normative HRM with performance orientation as well (Burgess, 2008, p. 19). The employment and industrial relation in Australia has long been part of one of the developments and successive arbitral model, but in the nineties, these have been challenged, modified and reshaped into an enterprise-focused system. The main reforms to promote the enterprise-focused system has been enhanced by the 1993 Reforms Act that in turn has become a fundamental move to dismantle many key coordinating and generalizing systems and tendencies that were evident in the early arbitral model. The Workplace Relations Act of 1996 has been another step in abandoning the ideas and relationships of the arbitral model and has put efforts to reinforce the enterprise and non-union focused employment relation in Australia (Gardner and Palmer, 1997, p. 44). Murray (2002) emphasized that employment relation reforms can enhance increased employee participation in workplace practices. The reforms can also help the companies solve real business problems, reduction in product development cycles, better customer focus etc. the development of information system and computer technologies have made it necessary that changes in employment relation would help companies solve difficulties and risks associated with workplace practices (p. 128- 130). Reforms and innovations in workplace relation, especially when it is with the collaboration of management, workers, and unions seem to be long-lasting. The Workplace Relation reforms in Australia have been found to be both collaborative with management and unions and being forced on the parties due to the particular crisis (Lansbury, 2000, p. 30).