Why doesn’t anyone talk about non-union collective agreements?

Abstract

Non-union collective agreements have become a common and widely accepted phenomenon in Australian industrial relations since the 1990s. This article asks why they are so rarely discussed in research, the media and public policy debates. On the way to exploring a range of factors that answer this question, we first summarise the relevant legislative provisions and reflect on their international exceptionalism. We review both data on the incidence and coverage of non-union collective agreements and the modest research on the practice of non-union collective agreement-making, almost all of which preceded the Fair Work Act. The penultimate main section analyses the few accounts of non-union collective agreements in the media and policy debates. The last main section presents our speculative and multi-causal answer to the why question.