Transforming workplace relations in New Zealand 1976-2016

The changes this book discusses, particularly the shift from a specific legal framework for employment relations to a one shaped by common law and the revival of the master servant contract, has enabled me to see that institutional habitus associated with the practice of common law is part of the answer. […]the different contributions aim to describe and reflect on the dynamics and drivers of workplace change over the stated time period of 1976 to 2016. […]as the chapters from the first two sub-sections illustrate, the changed nature of employment relations that the Employment Contracts Act put in place also facilitated an ideological onslaught that led to the loss of the social movement influenced ‘labour’ studies programmes systematically, a loss that has concluded poignantly for me personally by the last Labour studies programme at the University of Waikato being re-branded into a sociology minor called Work, Employment and Society in 2018. Both chapters also illustrate how the policy emphasis on worker involvement has been eroded through changes to health and safety and employment relations legislation and lower managerial commitment to high-trust workplace arrangements The last theme, ‘legal transformation’, revisited the subject material of the previous first and third themes, providing first a historical account of change (Anderson), and secondly, two specific areas of change dispute resolution (Robson) and ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) (Duncan).