Migrants, industry policy and decentralisation: from the Accord to the Workplace Relations Act

The Prices and Incomes Accord was the centrepiece of Labor's social and economic policy. Through its multiple phases it underpinned the Government's reform strategy, including the decentralisation of industrial relations. While the original Accord affirmed a commitment to immigration and multiculturalism, the welfare of migrant workers was never an explicit concern in this or subsequent versions. However the early provisions for centralised wage fixing and the social wage offered major benefits to vulnerable groups such as migrants. Later phases of the Accord, framed within the context of economic deregulation and industry restructuring, helped accelerate the loss of lower ,skilled 'migrant' jobs, and introduced decentralised bargaining. With the election of a Coalition government in 1996, the Accord is defunct and more 'reforms' are foreshadowed in the Workplace Relations Act. From the Accord to the Workplace Relations Act, the ongoing decentralisation of bargaining poses dangers for migrant workers, whose bargaining power has been eroded by long term structural changes in the manufacturing industries.