MMH349- Employment Relations

Learning outcome details

ULO1 Investigate the theories and concepts of employment relations via examining arguments pertaining to the link between enterprise bargaining and productivity growth.

ULO3 Identify the role, strategies and aims of the main actors in employment relation, as exemplified in their engagement in enterprise bargaining processes.

ULO4 Analyse how the Fair Work Act 2009 regulates employment relations through explanation of the legal rights of employees and legal obligations placed on employers during enterprise bargaining processes

Assessment task

Enterprise agreements are the centrepiece of the Fair Work Act 2009, such that the processes of bargaining leading to their conclusion figure prominently in its regulatory content. As of June 2017, there were 14,497 Federally-registered enterprise agreements, which cover 30.2 per cent of the Australian workforce, or around 1.9 million employees (Department of Employment, 2017, Trends in Enterprise Bargaining). The reasoning behind the favoured position of this type of labour contract is nowhere better stated than in the following description:

Enterprise bargaining is way a way of fostering a culture of change in the workplace and is a valuable tool in the process of continuous improvement. It can assist in the creation of responsive and flexible enterprises and help to improve productivity and efficiency. Increased productivity can provide higher wages to workers or more secure and satisfying work, higher profits to employers and lower priced goods and services to the public (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2016, Best Practice Guide Improving Workplace Productivity in Bargaining).

This assignment has three purposes. The first is to give you an appreciation of the legal requirements associated with the process of enterprise bargaining. This type of knowledge is important to any human resource manager working in an organisation of some size and complexity, as most apply terms and conditions of employment which have been settled through this process. The second is to provide you with the opportunity to work with the Fair Work Act 2009, so that you might become acquainted with its language and regulatory content. The third is to enable you to engage with one of the key debates surrounding enterprise agreements, in this instance their asserted link with productivity growth.

To these end you are required to answer the following questions:

(1) As prescribed by the Fair Work Act 2009, what legal obligations and entitlements need to be observed when employers and employees (and their unions) engage in enterprise bargaining?

(2) Is it valid to assume a link exists between enterprise bargaining and productivity growth? In addressing these questions you should draw on authoritative sources to support the discussion and arguments being made. What counts as ‘authoritative’ are peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly texts, mainstream media, employer associations, trade unions, and public institutions with an interest in employment relations. What is not counted as authoritative are personal opinions and experiences, as well as internet blogs, vanity sites and the like, recognisable by their having no legitimacy in representation or no accountable to public, political or academic review.