10th Annual E. L. Wheelright Lecture: Katherine Gibson

Since its heyday when 30 per cent of the workforce was employed in manufacturing, today only 8 per cent are employed in the sector and union membership has sunk to an all-time low of just over 12 per cent. Today, the prognosis of decline has intensified with recent plant closures in the foreign owned automotive industry and the shedding of 200,000 jobs (or 20 per cent of the manufacturing workforce) between 2008 and 2015. A frightening vision looms of a hollowed out Australian economy with an almost absent manufacturing sector. Yet, there is strong popular support for maintaining and strengthening a manufacturing base in this country and, according to the 2017 National Manufacturing Summit, there are signs that manufacturing  industry in Australia may be ‘turning a corner’. Clearly manufacturing is far from dead, but the apparent invisibility of a buoyant manufacturing culture is worrisome. In this lecture, Katherine Gibson will…