Industrial relations in the Latrobe Valley: myths and realities

Abstract In this paper we examine attitudes towards work, employment and industrial relations in the Latrobe Valley region of South East Victoria, Australia. The Latrobe Valley is an old industrial area of Victoria, 150 kilometres south east of Melbourne, based on power generation connected to open cast brown coal mining. The formerly stated-owned power generator (SECV) was broken up and privatised in the 1990s with devastating employment and social impacts on the locality. Before privatisation, the area in general, and SECV in particular, had a reputation for militant union organisation, leading to the joke that SECV stood for Slow Easy and Comfortable. Despite a radical restructuring of work and employment in the region, and a flurry of academic studies which suggested that the old image of the region as a hotbed of militancy was unwarranted, it is believed in some quarters that the old image of the region deters inward investment on the one hand and local entrepreneurial activity on the other. This pap...