DOI: 10.26193/uuguff
title: Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, 1995

description: AWIRS 95 was the second comprehensive workplace survey conducted by the Department of Industrial Relations. The AWIRS 95 data release includes data from both the original AWIRS project conducted in 1989/90 (AWIRS 90) and the second project conducted in 1995 (AWIRS 95). AWIRS 95 had similar objectives to the first AWIRS, in that it planned to: provide a comprehensive and statistically reliable data base on Australian workplace industrial relations; stimulate and inform community debate on workplace industrial relations issues; inform Government industrial relations policy development; and, ultimately help employers and unions improve economic performance through the development of more effective workplace industrial relations. The first AWIRS was conducted to address the lack of any systematic, comprehensive data base on workplace industrial relations in Australia. Previous studies were disparate in nature, and could not be aggregated as they covered a wide time frame and used a range of non-comparable methodologies. A main priority of AWIRS 90 was to establish the first cross-sectional picture of workplace industrial relations in Australia. The survey sought to collect information that would describe the different patterns of workplace industrial relations in order to map out the key features of workplace industrial relations structures, processes and outcomes. This is essentially what the major publication from the first AWIRS does (see R. Callus, A. Morehead, M. Cully and J. Buchanan, Industrial Relations at Work: The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, AGPS, Canberra, 1991). AWIRS 90 represented a benchmark against which changes could be judged. It was conducted in the expectation that future surveys would be able to measure changes at regular intervals of around five years. In this respect, the idea of an Australian series was modelled on the British program which has seen the conduct of three major workplace industrial relations surveys since 1980 and a fourth due in the field in the second half of 1997. Because it is the second survey and given the continuing rapid changes in the industrial relations system, AWIRS 95 had additional aims to those described for AWIRS 90. In particular, AWIRS 95 aimed to: assess changes that had taken place in workplace industrial relations since AWIRS 90; assess the direction of workplace reform and evaluate the impact of a range of industrial relations and labour market policies, with particular attention to the spread and nature of workplace bargaining; and, inform the annual reporting requirement under Section 170RC of the Industrial Relations Reform Act 1993 with regards to the effect of enterprise bargaining on particular population groups such as women, immigrants and part-time workers. In addition to the data files pertaining to the questionnaires and the derived variables, the AWIRS 95 data release also contains a number of data files of additional constructed data sets that researchers may find useful in conducting analysis. These constructed data sets are of three types: Data sets that combine variables that were common to both the main survey and small workplace survey in order to conduct analysis on the larger population of workplaces with five or more employees. Two such data sets have been constructed - one for AWIRS 90 and one for AWIRS 95 - and are known as the five-plus data sets. Data sets that combine variables that were common to both the AWIRS 90 and AWIRS 95 main and small workplace surveys in order to conduct analysis of change between the two surveys (that is, between 1990 and 1995). A data set of variables common to both years has been constructed for each of the four questionnaires in the main survey, for the small workplace survey and for the population of workplaces with five or more employees described in the previous point. These are known as the combined data sets. Data sets that combine variables that were common to both the AWIRS 90 main survey and AWIRS 95 panel survey for workplaces which exist in both surveys (that is, the sample of panel workplaces). A data set has been constructed for each of the four questionnaires that make up these two surveys. These are known as the matched data sets.
description: <b>Copyright:</b><br>Copyright © 1997, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (formerly the Department of Industrial Relations). All rights reserved.<br><br>