Deck 10: Managerial Unilateralism and Individual Contracting

Question 1

Identify and discuss the sources of restriction on managerial unilateralism during the 1980s in Australia.

Answer 1

A more liberal interpretation of 'industrial matters' by the High Court during the 1980s greatly increased the jurisdiction of the federal tribunals and, correspondingly, challenged some areas of managerial unilateralism. The key decisions were in the Social Workers case (1983) and the Cram case (1987). The effect of these cases was to allow the Commission to address a wider range of issues in awards, including consultation over the introduction of new technologies and redundancies, staffing levels and recruitment methods, and superannuation.
In addition, during the 1980s, unions came to recognise that their own restrictive work practices were a potential impediment to improved productivity and, in the context of greater international competition and the political climate created by the Accord, many unions offered to negotiate changes to these practices. This raised a major dilemma for employers: so long as these practices remained informal, employers could pretend that they retained the right to make decisions on workplace issues unilaterally. Once unions were granted a formal role in negotiating changes to these practices, that pretence was no longer sustainable-employers would have to accept work practices as rules that were jointly determined with unions. So, the new cooperativeness of Australian unions during the Accord years, and their apparent interest in improving productivity, in many ways represented a further challenge to 'traditional' managerial unilateralism.

Question 2

Individual contracting refers to:

A) management unilaterally determining outcomes.
B) unions and employers determining outcomes.
C) unions unilaterally determining outcomes.
D) individual employees and employers determining outcomes.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

List and describe four (4) new restrictions on managerial prerogative imposed since the election of the Rudd Labor government in 2007.

Answer 3

The coverage and scope of the safety net is broader through the National Employment Standards and modernised awards
Statutory individual contracts have been abolished
Protection of employees from unfair dismissal has been reinstated
New laws give limited support to trade unions and collective bargaining.

Question 4

Discuss individual contracting in Australia from the beginning of the twentieth century until the early 1990s.

Question 5

Managerial prerogative refers to:

A) areas of decision-making in which managers claim an unfettered right to decide.
B) areas of decision-making in which managers have a limited right to decide.
C) areas of decision-making in which managers have no right to decide.
D) None of the options given here is correct

Question 6

Discuss the two (2) important distinctions made in the literature that clarify some definitional aspects of individual contracting in Australia.

Question 7

What is managerial prerogative? List two (2) reasons for its expansion in Australia during the 1990s and 2000s.

Question 8

Substantive individualisation refers to:

A) substantial similarities in the content of individual agreements.
B) the content or substance of an individual agreement.
C) terms and conditions contained in individual employment contracts that are different for each employee.
D) None of the options given here is correct

Question 9

What were the key motives behind the use of Australian workplace agreements (AWAs) in Australian workplaces?

Question 10

How have the activities of unions affected the scope of managerial unilateralism?

Question 11

Managerial prerogative is often associated with which ideological perspective?

A) Unitarist
B) Egoist
C) Radical
D) Pluralist

Question 12

What enhanced the exercise of managerial prerogative as a rule-making process in the 1990s in Australia?

A) Enterprise bargaining
B) Individual contracting
C) The rise of non-union forms of employee representation
D) All of the options given here are correct

Question 13

Procedural individualism refers to:

A) substantial similarities in the content of individual agreements.
B) when each individual employee negotiates separately his or her own contract.
C) the differentiation of terms and conditions contained in individual employment contracts.
D) None of the options given here is correct

Question 14

Describe the relationship between Australian workplace agreements (AWAs) and the minimum standards contained in awards.

Question 15

Identify and discuss the main ways statute laws restrict managerial unilateralism in Australia.

Question 16

Identify ways managers resisted the greater restriction on their ability to act unilaterally in Australia.

Question 17

It is only when managers actually realise their ambition and make decisions by themselves that they are exercising:

A) managerial prerogative.
B) managerial unilateralism.
C) unitarism.
D) human resource ranagement.

Question 18

Identify the criticisms of the use of Australian workplace agreements (AWAs).

Question 19

Identify the intriguing remnant of statutory individual contracts in the 2009 Fair Work Act.

Question 20

Why were Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) so controversial when common-law contracts had always been available as a legal option for individual contracting?

Question 21

What are the two (2) types of individual employment contract in Australia and how common are they compared to other English-speaking countries?

Question 22

Why were the 2005 WorkChoices amendments to the Workplace Relations Act considered to be an extreme attempt to shift power in the labour market towards employers?

Question 23

When and from which groups did initial calls for 'statutory' individual contracting options originate?

Question 24

Once the common-law employee-employer relationship has been established, what 'duty' does an employee have?

Question 25

What are 'restrictive work practices' and why do unions continue to use them? Give an example.