Converging or diverging interests?: a two-stage cohort study of the determinants of employee attitudes to the Workplace Relations Act

When the Workplace Relations Act 1996 was introduced by the current government in 1996, it was justified on the basis that it provided a regulatory framework which allowed firms to structure their industrial relations practices to suit their own needs and those of their employees. This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by investigating the extent to which individual employees support or oppose the objectives of the Workplace relations Act using a unique data set collected in Victoria at the time of passage of the legislation at the beginning of 1997 and one year later, at the start of 1998.