Supporters of collective employment regulation in New Zealand would have celebrated a centenary of arbitration a full decade before Australia, in 1994. Yet fate intervened and New Zealand's arbitration system formally collapsed in 1991 following the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act....

New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act 1991 consigned to history almost 100 years of pervasive state regulation of collective employment relations. Many unions experienced a sharp decline in influence after the introduction of this piece of legislation. The traditional wharfies' union, the...