Managing through the Recession: An Analysis of Employee Relations in the Australian Engineering Industry

Abstract

The Australian engineering industry has experienced a period of prolonged recession. This paper explores management's responses to the crisis using data from a survey of 315 managers. Management priorities, changes in organizational product-related and technical aspects provide a basis for understanding the reduction in workforce size in many plants together with an emphasis by management on a more proactive, less informal and more sophisticated approach to employee involvement. The paper presents evidence of a relatively high degree of worker co-operation which, it argues, is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.