Editors' Choice Collection
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Editors’ Choice Collection “Industrial Relations: The Practitioner View” Editors’ Introduction to Virtual Special Issue Rae Cooper, Stephen Clibborn and Chris F Wright JIR Associate Editors, University of Sydney Business School, Australia The Journal of Industrial Relations (JIR) has a long and proud tradition of engagement with practitioners as well as undertaking its primary role as an outlet for rigorous research. Given the focus of industrial relations on the organisation, management and regulation of the employment relationship, it is inevitable and beneficial that there will be dialogue between scholars and practitioners on these issues. The emphasis on empirical rather than theoretical research tends to be stronger in industrial relations scholarship than many (if not most) social sciences, business and legal studies disciplines. This requires industrial relations researchers to gain the perspectives of practitioners in the process of formulating their ideas and arguments. Nonetheless, few if any journals have devoted as much attention to promoting the views and insights of practitioners as the JIR. Since the Industrial Relations Society of NSW (which later federated and is now the Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association) founded the journal in 1959, many dozens of articles authored by human resource managers, employer association and trade union officials, government ministers, public servants, labour lawyers and members of industrial courts and tribunals have been published on these pages. A cursory browse through the back issues will lead to the discovery of many luminaries that have written articles for the JIR over the years. An article in 1995 by Australia’s first female Justice of the High Court and equal pay pioneer Mary Gaudron analysed the significance and impact of the Boilermakers’ Case. In 2009, the then Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and later the first female Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard reflected on the transition to a new system of workplace laws. From 1975 to 1980, a union official-cum-journalist named Bob Carr, who would later become the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Premier of New South Wales, contributed the articles on trade union matters to the JIR Annual Review. The JIR has also featured articles by prominent union leaders such as John Ducker and John Halfpenny, leading employer association officials including Bob Herbert, Colin Polites and Reg Hamilton, government ministers such as Jeff Shaw, Clyde Cameron, Philip Lynch and Ian Macphee, senior court and tribunal members including John Moore, Richard Kirby, Jim Staples, Bill Fisher, and notable and infamous public servants such as former Secretary of Commonwealth Treasury Frederick Wheeler and former Governor- General John Kerr. This Virtual Special Issue on ‘Employment Relations: The Practitioner View’ brings together six articles published in previous editions of the JIR by accomplished practitioners on matters of contemporary and historical significance to Australian industrial relations. The article by former President of Fair Work Australia Geoffrey Giudice examines the prospects of industrial relations reform. Two articles – one by Qantas industrial relations manager Sue Bussell with John Farrow and another by former Australian Council of Trade Unions Assistant Secretary Tim Lyons – provide contrasting perspectives on the Fair Work Act. Heather Ridout, formerly Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group and a current Reserve Bank of Australia board member, addresses the issue of fairness in industrial relations policy. Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby – who has been a frequent contributor to the JIR on a diverse range of matters over many years – examines the relationship between human rights and industrial relations. And a 1993 article by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke provides a prescient assessment of the turbulent history and uncertain future of Australian industrial relations. We hope that you enjoy this collection. .