Industrial Dispute Tactics in Australian Manufacturing

Industrial action has been the subject of considerable economic research, but most research has focused exclusively on strikes and has ignored the fact that workers can use tactics other than strikes in resolving disputes. The fact that workers engage in forms of industrial action other than strikes raises important questions: What determines the incidence of nonstrike action, and how do these determinants compare with strikes? This article uses a recently developed dispute-level data set of both strike and nonstrike actions in Australian manufacturing to analyze determinants of the incidence of two types of industrial actions: strikes and work bans. Work bans are actions where workers refuse to engage in certain specified tasks such as overtime but otherwise remain on the job. Evidence is found that the incidence of work bans is affected by changes in economic and institutional conditions in significantly different ways than strikes.