This study has sought to examine the factors leading employers to form national co-ordinating machinery as well as to explain the reasons for the different forms of co-ordination adopted at different points of time. Several co-ordinating models, some containing variants, were developed by employers over the period under review. These models may be described as:

• the mutual defence model

• the federation model

• the alliance model

• the secretariat model

• the confederation model.

Successive sections of this chapter examine each of these models of co-ordination and the factors behind their development.

The mutual defence model

This was the earliest form of proposed national (and state/colonial) organisation identified in the study. Its rationale was not so much the co-ordination of employer policies or the negotiation with unions at the national or state levels as a method of stiffening employer resistance to union militancy. Under this scheme individual employers, and associations of employers, could insure themselves against the whip-sawing actions of unions. It was hoped that compensating employers for strike losses would enable them to resist union demands and thus prevent the percolation of new industrial standards. This method of mutual defence was the counterpart of the unions' method of mutual insurance and of strike funds, which attempted to make strike action less of a financial burden for members.

The logistic problems associated with the implementation of such a scheme on an Australia-wide basis, and the very different negotiatory styles adopted by employers and their associations, made such a concept difficult to bring into being.