IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecolab/v18y2007i1p115-142.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

AWAs and Individual Bargaining in the Era of WorkChoices: A Critical Evaluation Using Negotiation Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Sheldon
  • Nancy Kohn

Abstract

The Howard government's WorkChoices legislation appeared set to irremediably remake industrial relations in Australia by prioritising individual agreement making (through AWAs) at the expense of Australia's traditional award systems based on collective bargaining. That government explicitly intended these changes to reduce labour market rewards to, and protections for, low paid and more vulnerable employees. Yet, it also deployed a rhetoric of individual choice in advocating these changes, promoting, in particular, a notion that individual bargaining and agreement making under WorkChoices empowered individual employees by opening opportunities for integrative (mutual gains) bargaining. This article asks what these changes really meant for bargaining between individual employee and employer. We analyse crucial elements of WorkChoices to highlight how its main structural mechanisms intensified employee bargaining weakness in individual bargaining. As well, we use negotiation theory, especially in relation to integrative bargaining, to evaluate the government's own published advice to individual employees on how to bargain for an AWA. We find that the government explicitly sought to disempower employees through WorkChoices' additional legal and institutional impediments and also through the concerted attempt at coaching employees to choose a losing path in their AWA negotiations.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Sheldon & Nancy Kohn, 2007. "AWAs and Individual Bargaining in the Era of WorkChoices: A Critical Evaluation Using Negotiation Theory," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 18(1), pages 115-142, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:18:y:2007:i:1:p:115-142
    DOI: 10.1177/103530460701800107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/103530460701800107
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/103530460701800107?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Colin Fenwick, 2006. "How Low Can You Go? Minimum Working Conditions under Australia's New Labour Laws," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 16(2), pages 85-126, May.
    2. Mannix, Elizabeth A., 1993. "Organizations as Resource Dilemmas: The Effects of Power Balance on Coalition Formation in Small Groups," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-22, June.
    3. Levin, Irwin P. & Schneider, Sandra L. & Gaeth, Gary J., 1998. "All Frames Are Not Created Equal: A Typology and Critical Analysis of Framing Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 149-188, November.
    4. Anderson, Cameron & Thompson, Leigh L., 2004. "Affect from the top down: How powerful individuals' positive affect shapes negotiations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 125-139, November.
    5. Neale, Margaret A. & Huber, Vandra L. & Northcraft, Gregory B., 1987. "The framing of negotiations: Contextual versus task frames," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 228-241, April.
    6. Sean Cooney, 2006. "Command and Control in the Workplace: Agreement-Making under Work Choices," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 16(2), pages 147-164, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. O'Brien, Martin & Valadkhani, Abbas & Waring, Peter & Denniss, Richard, 2007. "BNew Developments in the Australian Labour Market in 2006," Economics Working Papers wp07-16, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    2. Laure Kuhfuss & Raphaële Préget & Sophie Thoyer & Nick Hanley & Philippe Le Coent & Mathieu Désolé, 2016. "Nudges, Social Norms, and Permanence in Agri-environmental Schemes," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 92(4), pages 641-655.
    3. Jing-Yi Chen & Ming-Hui Wang, 2023. "A Study on Real Estate Purchase Decisions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-21, March.
    4. Cubitt, Robin P. & Drouvelis, Michalis & Gächter, Simon & Kabalin, Ruslan, 2011. "Moral judgments in social dilemmas: How bad is free riding?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 253-264.
    5. Anna Fielder & Riina Vuorikari & Nuria Rodriguez-Priego & Yves Punie, 2016. "Background Review for Developing the Digital Competence Framework for Consumers: A snapshot of hot-button issues and recent literature," JRC Research Reports JRC103332, Joint Research Centre.
    6. Todd McElroy & David L. Dickinson & Irwin P. Levin, 2019. "Thinking About Decisions: An Integrative Approach of Person and Task Factors," Working Papers 19-04, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    7. Gold, Natalie & List, Christian, 2004. "Framing as Path Dependence," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 253-277, October.
    8. Hilary Byerly Flint & Paul Cada & Patricia A. Champ & Jamie Gomez & Danny Margoles & James R. Meldrum & Hannah Brenkert-Smith, 2022. "You vs. us: framing adaptation behavior in terms of private or social benefits," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 174(1), pages 1-17, September.
    9. Elfenbein, Hillary Anger, 2007. "Emotion in Organizations: A Review in Stages," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt2bn0n9mv, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    10. Wardley, Marcus & Alberhasky, Max, 2021. "Framing zero: Why losing nothing is better than gaining nothing," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    11. Hazel Bateman & Christine Eckert & Fedor Iskhakov & Jordan Louviere & Stephen Satchell & Susan Thorp, 2017. "Default and naive diversification heuristics in annuity choice," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 42(1), pages 32-57, February.
    12. Jain, Gaurav & Gaeth, Gary J. & Nayakankuppam, Dhananjay & Levin, Irwin P., 2020. "Revisiting attribute framing: The impact of number roundedness on framing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 109-119.
    13. Victor Manuel Bennett, 2013. "Organization and Bargaining: Sales Process Choice at Auto Dealerships," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(9), pages 2003-2018, September.
    14. Marianna Baggio & Luigi Mittone, 2016. "Experience and History: An Experimental Approach to Generational Heterogeneity," International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics (IJABE), IGI Global, vol. 5(4), pages 1-23, October.
    15. Van de Velde, Liesbeth & Verbeke, Wim & Popp, Michael & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2010. "The importance of message framing for providing information about sustainability and environmental aspects of energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5541-5549, October.
    16. Guillaume Hollard & Hela Maafi & Jean-Christophe Vergnaud, 2016. "Consistent inconsistencies? Evidence from decision under risk," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 80(4), pages 623-648, April.
    17. Beersma, Bianca & De Dreu, Carsten K. W., 2002. "Integrative and Distributive Negotiation in Small Groups: Effects of Task Structure, Decision Rule, and Social Motive," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 227-252, March.
    18. Dufwenberg, Martin & Gächter, Simon & Hennig-Schmidt, Heike, 2011. "The framing of games and the psychology of play," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 459-478.
    19. Wen, Tong & Leung, Xi Y. & Li, Bin & Hu, Lingyan, 2021. "Examining framing effect in travel package purchase: An application of double-entry mental accounting theory," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Hyeong Kim & Thomas Kramer, 2006. "“Pay 80%” versus “get 20% off”: The effect of novel discount presentation on consumers’ deal perceptions," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 311-321, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:18:y:2007:i:1:p:115-142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.