Back To The Map? Enterprise Agreements In Rural, Regional And Urban Australia

Abstract

With regulatory changes to industrial relations over the past decade, enterprise agreements have become a significant mechanism for establishing wages and working conditions. The incidence and characteristics of employment (enterprise) agreements across space in rural, regional and urban Australia have never been comprehensively examined. This paper draws upon insights concerning enterprise bargaining, and the geography of industrial relations to understand enterprise agreements in previously unexplored ways. It examines patterns at the sub-State regional level and their policy, practical and scholarly significance. In doing so, it proposes a significant role for spatial concepts in industrial relations analysis and argues that a different geography of industrial relations is immanent in decentralised, workplace arrangements.