Journal Facts

Journal
Journal of Collective Negotiations
ISSN
2167-7816 (print) 2167-7824 (electronic)
Volume
22
Issue
3
Date
9/1/1993

Article Facts

Title
THE UNSERVICEABILITY OF PUBLISHED ACCOUNTING DATA FOR ENTERPRISE BARGAINING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE
DOI
10.2190/LHPX-F5M7-F78M-P983
Author
RUSSELL CRAIG AND FRANK CLARKE
Online Date
05/09/2002

Article Links

THE UNSERVICEABILITY OF PUBLISHED ACCOUNTING DATA FOR ENTERPRISE BARGAINING IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE

RUSSELL CRAIG AND FRANK CLARKE

DOI: 10.2190/LHPX-F5M7-F78M-P983

Abstract

Australian experience in public sector wage negotiations provides useful insights to the problems emerging when conventional accounting data are injected into wage negotiations. Those data are as equally unserviceable in the public sector as they are in the private sector. This article draws upon the Australian bargaining context to argue that the nature of productivity gains in the public sector should be linked to wealth increases measured with recourse to accounting data. Only productivity gains translatable into wealth increments can be distributed as money wages. By virtue of the general unseviceability of conventional accounting data for measuring the wealth and progress of business enterprises of all varieties, public sector negotiators are faced with the challenge of demanding a reconstruction of the accounting mechanisms from which should emerge the financial data necessary in their wage bargaining.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.