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

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 unserviceability 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.