Individual Agreement-Awaking in Australian Workplaces: Incidence, Trends and Features

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidence suggestive of the rising importance of individual employment arrangements. Prior to this study, however, relatively little data were available that enabled the quantification of trends in the use of individual contracts and agreements, let alone provided details about the types of firms that introduce individual agreements, the reasons why those firms introduce them, and the major features of such agreements. It is these questions that this article seeks to address. The main vehicle for achieving this is a data set collected as part of a survey of workplace managers conducted in September 1998.