STATE INTERVENTION IN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

State Intervention in Employment Relationship

State Intervention in Employment Relationship

Introduction

Aaron et al (2011, 615-630) says that associations and their employees and managers are the main sources that deal with matters like that of employment relations. There also lies another party that deals with employment relations and that is the state. State refers to a present condition of an entity or a system that is a sub entity or governed entity of a country. It is an elected government of the day that tries to implement its will with all other agencies working together (Kornfeld 1993, 114). State comprises of many agencies working together and not acts as a single actor. Therefore, roles such as judicial, economic and political are separated which can be seen as arbitrary.

Discussion

Today, the Australian labor law favors flexibility, the flexibility and the ease of hiring and firing. Legal protection of employment is sometimes minimal, despite a strong union activity. The legal framework governing labor relations in Australia is the Workplace Relations Act 1996; Federal Law came into force on 1 January 1997 and 27 March 2006 as amended by the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, also known as Work Choices. This code promotes collective labor agreements (awards or certified agreements) of the federal system that provides the framework governing the minimum conditions for employment (The Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard) (McBratney et al 2010, 1019-1022). The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), in turn, determines the twenty key themes federal collective agreements labor. These are;

Classification of employees;

Hours of work;

Remuneration and payment;

Bonuses and premiums;

Different types of absences and holidays;

Annual leave;

Holidays;

Procedures in case of dispute or unfair dismissal.

The written contract of employment (Australian Workplace Agreement - AWA) is an individual agreement between the employer and employee, which sets the working conditions and remuneration. As such, it always refers to the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard, which establishes the legal framework of the employment relationship (Holland et al 2011, 95-111).

As stated earlier, it is difficult to define the true meaning of State as it does not work independently but it is interlaced with many other government departments and various institutions. All these together can influence employment relations. The state performs a number of functions while staying in touch with employment relations. For instance, during strikes and other instances, police and army have been deployed. The day to day relationship has also been changed between unions, employees and managers when the court passed judgments (Turnbull et al 1992, 385). Not only has this but the government also emphasized on various institutions and conferring extensive powers upon them. These institutions include employment tribunals, Low Pay Commission and ACAS. The State described it as 'all government institutions which hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force' (Weber, 1919). There was no industrialized country in the world until 1950 employment relation wise, where there were few interventions by the State. However, with the passage of time, state interventions have ...