Sunday 11 December 2011

Graeme Orr and industrial action

Associate Professor Graeme Orr has written Whatever you might have heard, industrial action is in decline. Here's an excerpt:
Industrial action in Australia is rare, by both historical and developed world standards. Take the last financial year. 166,000 working days were lost to industrial action, whether strikes by employees or lockouts by employers.

Is that a lot or a little? Let's picture it in absolute terms. Imagine sitting outside a factory gate for a whole year. In an employed workforce of over 9.5 million, last year’s level of action equates to seeing just one employee in every 57 emerge, for just one day of the year, to miss work. Industrial action in Australia remains near record lows. To picture it in historically relative terms, consider the graph below, which I compiled from Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

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