The major focus of contemporary industrial relations is award restructuring. This restructuring, with its potential to facilitate a better skilled, more flexible and more efficient workforce is integrally related to the National Wage determining process and the ACTU-ALP Accord. It is also a key to international competitiveness and the wellbeing of the manufacturing sector. In recent years the wage determination process has attempted to reduce those normative forces which industrial tribunals have institutionalized — in particular comparative wage justice and real wage maintenance. This attempt has created a number of tensions: control versus flexibility; cost of living versus productivity; centralism versus decentralism; paid rates versus minimum rates; supplementary payments versus over award payments; equity versus efficiency. The system’s capacity to resolve these tensions without merely returning to established wage settlement practices will determine the efficacy of the restructuring exercise. It will also shape the contours of industrial relations for the next decade.