Sport, once an amateur pursuit has evolved in to a lucrative industry. The most
recent development in the evolution of Australian sport has been the emergence of
industrial regulation. Unlike other Australian labour markets, the sports administrators
labour market was entirely market regulated until 1994. Over the last five years the sports
administrators labour market has transformed into a centralised award based system. On
the surface it appears that there is no obvious explanation for the dramatic re-regulation of
this labour market. In order to determine the factors behind the re-regulation, this thesis
investigated Australian sports administrators attitudes to unionism, awards and enterprise
bargaining, including their preferences to awards and enterprise bargaining agreements.
The attitudes of 229 Australian sports administrators were surveyed. The response rate was
67.25%. Findings from the survey indicated a number of points: (1) union membership
predicted 8% of their attitude to unionism, (2) non union members were more likely to have
positive and accepting attitudes to unions, (3) sports administrators working under
Enterprise Bargaining agreements had more positive and accepting attitudes of unions, (4)
Enterprise Bargaining was considered to be more beneficial than not in sport, (5) Enterprise
Bargaining had more than double the support of Award regulation, and (6)Award
regulation had almost equal amounts of rejection and support.
Other results indicated that the sports administrators labour market remained market
regulated until 1994 because a majority of sports administrators belonged to demographic
groups which were less inclined to become union members. Factors behind the reregulation
were determined to be: strong support for targeted services within workplaces
rather than generic services across an industry, and strong support for increased union
interaction when negotiating terms and conditions of employment which effects sports
administrators' attitudes to unionism. It was evident that the re-regulation was not caused
by a large shift in the attitudes of sports administrators or a result of problems stemming
from the market being entirely by market regulation. It is more than likely that the sudden
re-regulation of the sports administrators labour market was the sports industry's first step
towards industrial maturity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219244 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Palmer, Jocelyn Anne, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Human & Biomedical Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Jocelyn Anne Palmer |
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