New Book: Transforming Workplace Relations in New Zealand 1976-2016


edited by Gordon Anderson with Alan Geare, Erling Rasmussen and Margaret Wilson

This collection of essays was published to mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of the New Zealand Journal of Industrial Relations.
In the late 1960s New Zealand’s industrial relations entered the most turbulent era in its history. The following three decades witnessed the decline and eventual repeal of the century-old arbitration system and culminated with the Employment Contracts Act in 1991, internationally the most rapid and radical neo-liberal labour market reform of that era of reform.
A decade later that the Employment Relations Act 2000 provided, if not a consensus, at least some broad agreement on the regulation of labour relations resulting in almost two decades of relative stability.

In this book a wide range of academic commentators reflect on this revolution in labour relations and speculate on the future of work relationships in a world again being challenged by newly evolving forms of work and employment. Contributors include both those who lived through the last 40 years as well as those who, in another 40 years, may again look back over a much changed employment landscape.