Collective Bargaining Rights under the Workplace Relations Act: The Boeing Dispute

ABSTRACT

Boeing's maintenance workers at the Williamtoum RAAF base in New South Wales went on strike during 1905–1906 in a campaign to achieve a collective agreement in the face of Boeing's determination to rely on individual based industrial instruments. The dispute was one of the longest in Australia's recent history and ended with the defeat of the strike. Although Australia has ratified International Labour Organization Conventions on the right to bargain collectively, the dispute demonstrates the absence under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) of any legal mechanism to resolve disputes over union recognition and, more broadly, the lack of genuine choice available to workers who seek to bargain collectively with an employer.