SPIN DOCTORS’ DICTIONARY – CONFIDENTIAL!

This dictionary is designed for employers and governments to avoid calling a spade a spade or revealing their hand.
Balanced: the balance is tipped in favour or employers and their profits
Boost investment: corporate tax cuts
Budget surplus: holy grail of neoliberalism
Challenge: crisis
Coercion: use when trade unions place bans, go-slows, take strike action during bargaining
Competitive – make Australia competitive: slash wages and working conditions to third world levels
Compliance: obeying bad, anti-worker laws
Compromise: trade unions abandon their class interests
Consultation: justify any decision by saying you have consulted
Cooperation: class collaboration
Deregulation: removal of any restrictions on business operations, safety standards, etc
Easy – it won’t be easy: signals tough, regressive measures hurting social security recipients and workers
Economic stimulus: tax cuts for rich and corporations, rapid depreciation of capital expenditure
Extortion: pressure applied during bargaining by trade unions
Efficiency: greater efficiency means larger profits
Fairer: benefit employers
Fiscal discipline: budget cuts that hurt the poor and working people
Flexibility: as in flexibility for the bosses
Free markets: unchecked monopoly capital profiteering
Hard decision: hits workers or social security recipients while pretending to show empathy
Have a go to get a go: if you didn’t get a go, then you’re a bludger
Head winds: difficult external factors, use as an excuse for poor economic results
Ideological – don’t be ideological: employer or government demand that the recipient adopt the ideological position of the person issuing the demand
Job creation: tax cuts for rich and corporations
National interests: employers’ interests – profits
Persuasion: black mail by a government
Productivity – such as increase productivity: increase profits by increasing output per worker e.g. two workers doing the work of three and being paid less for their extra effort or job destruction through use of new technology
Live within our means: cut social spending and public services
On board: ignore e.g. say ‘I’ll take that on board’ during negotiations meaning ‘No way I’m doing that’
Recovery: recovery for profits at the expense of workers’ incomes
Red tape: regulations, cutting red tape means deregulation
Remarkably resilient: not doing well, implying blame on external factors
Savings: use in budgets meaning cuts
Simplify: gut in relation to awards or enterprise agreements
Simpler: fewer rights or protections
Simplify: deregulate
Softer revenue environment: decline in sales
Target: exclude those who should be included
Tax system to support jobs and investment: tax cuts for rich and corporations