Employee voice in enterprise bargaining: what managers miss when they fail to listen

ABSTRACT

Despite being reregulated several times, the Australian system of ‘enterprise bargaining’ has remained adversarial in nature and thus has failed to live up to the potential promised. This article examines a case study where employees hold a great deal of power through a strong union. Additionally and separate from the institutional arrangements, employees identify a number of ways that they identify currently affect productivity in their workplace(s), but poorly integrated employee voice systems and a low level of trust means that the benefits of bargaining are somewhat limited. Evidence from this case study suggests that improved trust and a process of listening to, and learning from employee voice are required for employers and employees to better capitalise on bargaining opportunities and shift from distributive bargaining to integrative bargaining models.

KEYWORDS:

• Employee voice
• enterprise bargaining
• qualitative case study

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr John Lewer and Professor Rae Cooper for their advice on an earlier draft of this paper. In addition, the authors would like to thank the anonymous referees and editors for their feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Keith Townsend

Keith Townsend is employed at Griffith University, Nathan campus. His research interests focus on industrial relations and human resource management with particular attention on frontline managers, employee voice, and qualitative research methods.

Rebecca Loudoun

Rebecca Loudoun has been employed in the university sector for more than two decades and researches and teaches in the areas of human resource management, industrial relations, and health and safety management.