Liberal IR promise:
an even bigger whip hand for the bosses
Bob Briton The Libs would have won a lot of bosses' hearts last week. First there was the announcement that a re-elected Coalition would see to it that workers forced into being contractors for jobs would be excluded from the provisions of the Workplace Relations Act (WRA) and protection under state industrial relations (IR) systems (see The Guardian of last week). Then came another election policy with the cynical title Flexibility and Productivity in the Workplace: the Key to Jobs. Among the goodies on offer to the bosses from Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews are: * $12 million-worth of help to small business on how to stitch their workers up in non-union Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual work contracts) * The option for employers to extend the term of AWAs from three years to five years * "Harmonising" of federal and state industrial relations law to ensure lower federal standards apply * Denial of union right of entry to workplaces * Tightening of the Trade Practices Act noose on "secondary boycotts" or sympathy strikes * A renewed pledge to exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws and lifting their obligation to make redundancy payments (the Libs happily point out that small business now employs almost half of Australia's private sector workers) Employer outfits like the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry have criticised Howard for not announcing a single, national industrial relations scheme and for not further reducing the number of "allowable matters" in awards from 20 to just six (!). However, on this occasion Howard is advising his backers to have a bit of patience. "You defend the industrial relations gains you have made and you push the boundaries out as far as possible", he told the media last week. There can be no doubt that a Coalition government would press ahead to give the bosses all the items on their wish list as soon as possible. Andrews is saying that the Commonwealth does not even have the constitutional powers to collapse the states' industrial relations systems into a single federal one. This is not strictly true. The Howard Government has already looked at the Commonwealth's corporations power to try to undermine the states' IR systems in its previous attempts to exempt small business from unfair dismissal laws. Howard knows that if he were to leave the IR matters of only small, unincorporated businesses to the states to deal with, they would probably wind up their bureaucracies and hand the responsibilities over to the federal body. If re-elected, this could well be the device a Coalition government uses to take what the bosses, the right-wing think tanks and (until very recently) Howard himself have described as the next major hurdle towards industrial relations "reform". "Simplifying" the system In the meantime, the Libs have set themselves the task of "harmonising" and "simplifying" the IR system. "Simplifying" was also the term used to describe the stripping of awards back to "20 allowable matters". A number of recent defeats on the question of unions' right of entry to workplaces has no doubt spurred them into action. In September the AIRC upheld the right of organisers from the Finance Sector Union to enter the ANZ bank to interview labour hire workers about underpaid wages. In July the Federal Court found that building firm BRG did not have the right to exclude representatives of the CFMEU from its Pilbara site even though all of its workers were hired under AWAs. Justice Robert French rejected the argument of the Federal Government that federal legislation on right of entry overrode state law. The continued capacity of unions to organise workers clearly outrages the Libs. The potential for unions to upset the AWA applecart must sting, too. Howard is putting a lot of effort into promoting the "benefits" of the non-union workplace. Much of the Libs election campaigning is centred on how real wages have risen and the number of industrial disputes has slumped. However, workers know the real story behind these boasts. The low level of industrial disputes is the consequence of the Federal Government's anti- union legislation and the results of this restriction on workers' right to struggle are plain for all to see. Last week ACTU President Sharan Burrow gave the PM a reality check with the following stats: 2.2 million Australians work casually, one in two new full-time jobs created since 1996 being casual; around half of all employees (4.1 million workers) earn less than $650 a week; 64.8 per cent of jobs created between 2000 and 2003 pay less than $600 a week; part time jobs grew by 32.5 per cent in the same period (more than 600,000 part timers want more work); and unpaid overtime has increased 24 per cent since 1996 (almost a million Australians now work unpaid overtime). While it is true that industrial action to protect workers' interests has fallen to the lowest levels on record (in part due to unions avoiding penal provisions of the WRA), despite the fact that the bosses have gone all out to take advantage of the current IR climate to lay the boot in. A study by Dr Chris Briggs from Sydney University has found that between 1999 and 2003, 57.5 percent of the industrial action lasting longer than 20 days was initiated by the bosses. Of these employer lockouts, 25 percent were aimed at getting workers to agree to pay cuts and another 15 percent were to get workers to sign individual contracts. Most of the lockouts were in manufacturing. Kristen van Barneveld of the University of Newcastle has tipped a bucket of cold water on claims that workers' wages are going through the roof under Howard. Kristen found that AWAs were less likely to contain provisions for wage rises during the life of the agreement and, where rises were possible, were more likely to be productivity-based than in enterprise agreements. Wage levels are more likely to fall below the award over the life of an AWA - - hence the bosses' excitement about extending their term from three to five years. AWAs one-sided On the question of "individual" treatment under an AWA, the researcher concluded "most of the benefits which had been achieved through the introduction of AWAs were one-sided, with employers achieving wages and hours of flexibility at the expense of employee entitlements." "Protecting, securing, building" is the Libs' bold election slogan. However, the fine print reads differently for workers — it is not their interests that are going to be secured and built upon. While a lot of the detail on how the Coalition intends to tighten up the TPA and let small business out of their obligations to workers has not been revealed, it is clear that Howard intends to keep going down the same industrial relations path that has led to the disastrous consequences described by the ACTU President. A lot hangs on the vote of October 9.