The analysis of Australian union behaviour, growth and structure has centred on the relationship between unions and arbitration. To varying degrees it has been assumed that Australian unions are, through their involvement and legal incorporation into the arbitral system of labour market...

This paper offers a systematic overview of the working class, refutes common arguments about its supposed disappearance or irrelevance, and seeks to demonstrate the power of Marxist analysis in explaining its role and behaviour. We understand the workingclass as those who do not own or control...

Mathematically tractable models of unionism have been well developed and are widely used in the economic literature. However, assumptions about union goals and preferences, and how these are determined, are not supported by extensive empirical evidence. Following the lead of Clark and Oswald...

Since the early 1970s memebership has been in a process of continual decline inmost industrialised countries, including Australia. Australian Bureau of Statistics survey datae estimates Australian union density rates declined twenty percentage points between 1975 ( 51.0 percent) and 1996 (31.0...

Over the last decade a large decline in union membership and influence has been observed in many countries. This observation has prompted many researchers to consider the means by which individual unions are able to mitigate the effects of less favourable economic and political conditions on...

The Asutralian esperience of corporatism challenges the view that curtailing trade union influence is an essential component of successful industrial adjustment , and that trade union influence has been preserved or enhanced. This paper rejects both propositions.

Recently industrial relations in Korea has experienced an upsurge in industrial unrest between trade unions, employers and the state as the militant independent trade union movement responded to the draconian Trade Union Act re-amended in December 1996. This paper argues that any account of the...

The paper explain how the Workers' Education Association's accomodation of apparently divergent imperial influences from the UK and the USA prevented a long-lasting compact between its labour movement and middle class membership. In the aftermath of World War ONe, conflict between the competing...

Women's involvement in trade unions and their direct participation in industrial action has been the subject of growing interest for labour historians and industrial relations scholars. Some research has also concentrated on women's indirect participation to paid work. However just as this field...

Creighton, Ford and Mitchell note that "No published research on the use made by Australian unions of the registration provisions of the British 'model' of the 1870s is available, and therefore the precise impact of these statutes remains open to further examination". The central purpose of this...