The Sociological Implications of Voluntary Redundancy: The South Australian Experience

Abstract

The experience of voluntary redundancy on the current scale is fairly new in Australia and its impact on workers and society is only just beginning to be observed and interpreted. Under the economic rationalist policies of successive federal governments which promoted a free market economy driven by privatisation, deregulation and de-institutionalisation, Australia has undergone considerable structural change in the 1990s. This change has been marked by government-supported labour restructuring, within both the private and public sectors of industry. The purpose of the study was to explore the concept of voluntary redundancy, whether mature-aged workers were being targeted, and the sociological implications of voluntary redundancy for workers in South Australia.