Australian Strike Activity in an International Context: 1964-85

Abstract

The relative level of strike activity delivered by the Australian industrial relations system is central to current debate. The most simple method of addressing this issue is to make international comparisons of average working days lost per employee from industrial disputation. This paper reports these data for fourteen OECD countries for 1964-85. Simple comparison of strikes is far from an ideal method for judging the relative efficacy of countries' industrial relations systems, for two main reasons. The first is that different criteria are used across countries for inclusion or collection of strike data. Australian statistics are relatively comprehensive, implying that some part of Australia's relatively high level of strike activity is attributable to measurement. Second, macroeconomic variables influence the incidence and duration of strikes. This simple observation renders suspect the use of international comparisons of these disputes data as reflections only of industrial relations systems, since differences in macroeconomic experience will manifest themselves, to some extent, in these data. Through control for inflation and unemployment, among other things, a more accurate assessment of the Australian industrial relations system in an international context is made possible. The Australian system apparently delivers lower, or about the same, strike activity as culturally and politically similar countries. Overall there is no reason to believe that Australia is markedly different from the international norm.