The Accord

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In Australian industrial relations the Accord was a policy of industrial peace, class collaboration and corporatism, during the 1980s. It was first proposed by the Communist Party of Australia in the late 1970s, as a response to a perceived productivity crisis,[citation needed] and actively taken up and implemented as government policy after 1983 by an Australian Labor Party government under Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer (later Prime Minister) Paul Keating.

The Accord was an agreement between trade unions, the government, and employers to restrict wage demands, inflation and price rises respectively. This was seen as a method to increase productivity without reducing the living standards of Australians. At the beginning of the Accord, only one union, the New South Wales Nurses Federation , voted against the Accord. The Accord broke down in the late 1980s and lead to the enterprise bargaining period.

Criticisms of the Accord generally come from the revolutionary left within Australia, who claim that it kept real wages stagnant for over ten years, destroyed union membership and strength, and caused real suffering for members of the Australian working class.

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