Workplace Industrial Relations on the Eve of Work Choices, a national survey of 2170 enterprises by Sydney University's Workplace Research Centre, found 3 per cent of businesses experienced industrial disputes in the 12 months to April 2006.
In workplaces with more than 100 staff, 13 per cent reported industrial trouble. The study also found 64 per cent of managers and proprietors had "good" or "very good" relations with unions, while 4 per cent were dissatisfied.
"The obvious conclusion to draw is that Work Choices is driven less by concrete problems and more by ideology," the report's co-author, Dr John Buchanan, told the Herald. The study, conducted with the business rating agency Dunn & Bradstreet, found that 87 per cent of all workplaces and 50 per cent of workplaces with more than 100 employees were non-union.
Dr Buchanan said Work Choices had benefited mainly executives, restoring their "managerial prerogative" by reversing a 100-year trend in which managers and staff shared authority.
"Once employers have experienced power in the form of increasingly unrestricted managerial prerogative," the report says, "this support [for Work Choices] is likely to solidify."
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