Awards, Certified Agreements and AWAs – Some Reflections

Abstract

Since the introduction of the Workplace Relations Act (WRA) in 1996, the traditional forms of employment regulation in the federal jurisdiction have been augmented by Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). Unlike awards and certified agreements, both of which are collective forms of regulation, AWAs may provide for individual forms of regulation, and thus mark a significant change to the federal system of employment relations. The first part of this paper describes the system of awards and collective agreements that operate in the federal industrial relations system. The second part of the paper examines the incidence of AWAs and makes a number of observations based on a previous study (Plowman, Watson and Kelly 2001)2. This second part is more a pointer for further research than an authoritative evaluation of the current experience.