Abstract:
This paper investigates the changing pattern of seasonal influences on quarterly
Australian data on aggregate working days lost due to industrial disputes per
thousand employees for the period 1983:1 to 2004:3. The analysis suggests the
presence of (a) a structural break in tne stationarity properties of the data around
1992-93 and (b) the presence of seasollality in the data, though this appears to be
most significant for the pre-1993 period. It is noted that the break in the stationarity
and change in seasonality properties of the data corresponds approximately with
the period between the introduction of enterprise bargaining in the Australian
Industrial Relations Commission in late 1991 and the introduction of the industrial
Relations Reform Act 1993, which was enacted in earty 1994. It is suggested that
these and other legislative and socio-ecol1omic changes that ushered in the
progressive abandonment of centralised wage-fixing practices, may have contributed
to the weakening of seasonality in aggregate quarterly strike statistics during the
Latter part of the period under review.
