Employment Industrial Relations
Order Description
You will study three enterprise agreements. Using one of those agreements as a reference point:
a) Identify significant differences between that agreement from the two other agreements reviewed in your (worksheet) – COMPLETED, PLEASE REFER TO WORKSHEET ATTACHED
b) Assess the degree to which the agreement differs from the relevant Modern Award (worksheet) – COMPLETED, PLEASE REFER TO WORKSHEET ATTACHED
PLEASE ANSWER QUESTION C for the essay:
c) Discuss the reasons for the differences you uncovered for (a) and (b) (600 words in essay-format). The reasons that enterprise agreements are different are mostly because of the nature of work (the ‘labour process’) in a particular industry. Differences may also reflect the differences in bargaining power between employers and employees in an industry.
The essay should be looking at the following:
• Is the agreement more generous than the award? Why? (this will comprise the last 3 lines of the assignment)
• Are these agreements reflecting a strategic approach to HRM, or reactive?
• If the EA is similar to the relevant MA, with only one or two differences, one could say the EA is ‘reactive’ rather than ‘strategic’.
• Discuss differences in Labour process; bargaining power. Unionised, competition, supply and demand, i.e. orchestra is knowledge based and has less competition for labor resulting in higher wages.
• For wage, use 1 modern award
• For complexity of structure/classification, use all modern awards