Press Release
For: Saturday 30 August 2008
The state of industrial relations
WorkChoices lives, and always will, says the editor of a new book by the Evatt Foundation.
In the introduction to a new collection of essays by leading industrial relations specialists and
participants, The State of Industrial Relations, Dr Sheil argues that there will be more bids to
privilege individual employment contracts.
“Few things can be more genuinely certain in politics” writes Dr Sheil.
“Whether this will occur as soon as the Opposition manages to win another federal election, or
whether this most venerable of conservative tropes has been seen off for another generation, is
impossible to know.”
“WorkChoices, it will be recalled, was not foreshadowed before the 2004 election, suggesting
that little comfort can be taken from the Opposition’s disavowal.”
Dr Sheil is President of the Evatt Foundation and a historian at the University of New South
Wales.
Other contributors to the book include specialists on collective bargaining such as Drs Bradon
Ellen and Rae Cooper from the University of Sydney, and leading participants in the industrial
relations debate, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence.
The new book will be launched by the Secretary of Unions NSW, John Robertson, with the
Director of Sydney University’s Workplace Relations Centre, Dr John Buchanan, on Thursday
evening in the atrium of Sydney Trades Hall.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Read the full “Introduction” to The State of Industrial Relations by Christopher Sheil at:
The Evatt Foundation is the think tank of the Australian labour movement.
Chris Gambian, Secretary, ph: 0438 898 198. Christopher Sheil, President, ph: 0419
436 052. Evatt Foundation Office: 8090 1170. Email: admin@evatt.usyd.edu.au
Title: Sheil, C (ed.), The State of Industrial Relations, Evatt Papers, Volume 1, Number 5, Evatt
Foundation, ISSN 1320-5498, Paperback, 104 pp, (pdf copy available for journalists on request).
Launch: John Robertson with Dr John Buchanan, 6.30 pm for 7 pm, Thursday 4 September,
Atrium, Sydney Trades Hall. Light refreshments.
NEWS 
