The Australia Institute (TAI) has released a report arguing that proposed reforms to Australia’s industrial relations laws are likely to support higher coverage for collective bargaining in the national labour market, and provide a boost to stagnant wage growth.
The report reviews historical data on the erosion of collective bargaining in Australia, and its close correlation to the slowdown in wage growth visible after 2013. The authors find that the decline of collective bargaining coverage (which fell by almost half in the private sector since 2013) explains over 50% of the change in wage growth during that same time.
The report notes that all measures of wage growth decelerated sharply from 2013:
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