Different Paths to Similar Outcomes: Industrial Relations Reform in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, both New Zealand (1894) and Australia (1906) adopted a distinctive form of labor market regulation known as compulsory arbitration. The arbitration systems in the two countries shared a number of common elements that fundamentally shaped the development of labor relations for much of the twentieth century. In an effort to prevent the re-emergence of the damaging industrial conflicts both countries experienced in the late nineteenth century, (quasi-judicial) industrial tribunals were established in both countries with the power to arbitrate disputes between employers and employees and to issue binding awards.