Workers' Compensation Dispute Resolution: a Western Australian Case Study

Workers'Compensation Dispute Resolution - Compensation systems are intense examples of the ways in which governments rationalise competing demands made upon them by powerful interest groups in the formulation of social policy. They involve competing concerns in relation the maintenance of work incentives, the authority of employment relations, the allocation of fault for disabilities suffered by workers, accident deterrence and prevention, the preservation of professional autonomy and workers rights. The tensions revealed in relation to these competing interests are acted out in the dispute process. These tensions relate to process-orientated values often asserted by key players around the right to adjudication of claims, the right to legal representation, and the independence of medical care providers. Disputed workers compensation claims are a unique area of dispute resolution because they involve the interaction of a disparate cluster of powerful interests group and the transference of tensions characteristic of industrial disputes to the compensation arena and the complexities inherent in the juggling of social and economic policy.