Secretary's Soapbox August 2006
The Current Situation Facing The Union Movement
Some Aspects
| by Brian Boyd, Secretary VTHC |
1 August 2006 |
We are facing a sustained, determined push from the Howard government to change the very nature of Australian society. Even though his government has been in power for over a decade, the coalition federal government has upped-the-ante since October 2004, when it won the last federal election and more importantly control of the senate. Since 1996, the conservative agenda has been slowly seeping through the economic, social and political fabric of the country. This process is now accelerating noticeably and dangerously.
Let me list a few examples by way of illustration:
a) IR laws
b) Social welfare / welfare to work
c) OHS dilution
d) Foreign policy – unquestioned all the way with the USA
e) Attempting to dumb-down the educational framework
Expanding on some of these I naturally want to talk about the recently updated federal IR laws and their impact. Many of us will be well aware of some of the outrageous, anecdotal stories of recent times – the Cowra abattoirs, Spotlight, Optus, Lufthansa call centre, the Perth railing construction workers, just to name a few. However the dark heart, the poisonous centre of the contemptuously named ‘Work Choices’ legislation is still to come.
The law now ends the reasonable legal status that collective agreements (EBA’s) and award safety nets had in the past. It puts instead AWA’s in the forefront, at the top of workplace arrangements, virtually immune from challenge. This reversal puts the acid on the union movement.
In addition, the AIRC is now gutted and the process to achieve collective EBA’s is fraught with numerous barriers. In particular, the role of unions has been restricted as never before.
‘Work Choices’ was dressed up as providing more flexibility for employer and employee.
In the legal profession for example one of the biggest issues in recent years has been the expectation of women to have available, realistic, flexible working conditions. Many women in that profession have wanted the ability to be able to move between periods of being in and out of work in order to bear children and raise a family for example. Not an uncommon aim for many women in other professions and jobs.
If ‘Work Choices’ contains the flexibility claimed by the federal government, then why isn’t it delivered through simple negotiation? Why do women lawyers, who by the way negotiate everyday for a living, continue to experience great difficulty in securing family friendly working conditions?
Just recently the Law Institute of Victoria and the Victorian Women Lawyers Organisation released the results of a survey of law firms showing there is and has been little advancement in this area. The reality is, for women, flexible arrangements are a long way off!
While working flexibly is an option, it remains more “a privilege bestowed” on a few, according to the survey.
For those who take it – there is “a decline in the quality of work” available to them and, as well “prospects of career advancement” also suffer. In fact according to the survey flexible working lawyers in 2006 are less likely to be promoted than was likely back in 2001!
Ironically, an employer body, which was one of the architects of the new IR laws, the Business Council of Australia (B.C.A.) has recently argued for an increase in women’s workforce participation in order to offset the impending impact of the ageing population and declining fertility rates. The B.C.A. has publicly said greater flexibility in the way we work, should see a reduction in penalties faced by women who want to combine paid work and raising a family.
But there is nothing, nothing at all in ‘Work Choices’ to facilitate this. Negotiation alone was never going to provide a vehicle for this worthy aim. It had to be legislated and the B.C.A. knows this.
The key aim of legislation was never real, legitimate flexibility. It was always about curtailing unions representing working people and giving even more power to employers.
Let’s also look at the longstanding trade union campaign around pay equity in this country. Its fate is another guaranteed victim of the impact of Howard’s recently updated IR laws.
Australian women have been in the past, comparatively better placed than women in many other countries to working towards equal pay outcomes, largely because of Australia’s history of having a centralised wage fixing system. But of course there was always a long way to go. Up until now Australian, full-time working women were earning 82% of full-time men’s earnings. The gender pay gap is much greater, if part-time workers are included in the equation.
The international evidence shows that the more centralised the industrial relations system, the better the pay equity result can be for women. In Australia, pay used to be set at a national or industry level by awards or at an enterprise level.
The Howard government is committed to the complete decentralisation of wages bargaining. The federal treasurer, Peter Costello, has stated: “we should be trying to move to an industrial relations system where the predominant instrument is the individual contract”.
The government has already reduced the number of working conditions in federal awards from 20 allowable matters to a mere handful. As well, the government is now moving to break down the skill based career structures built into many awards. Skill based career structures have only recently been inserted in some awards covering female dominated industries and occupations. This provided long-awaited opportunities for improvements in pay equity.
Over 1½ million Australian working people (20% of workers) until recently relied only on awards to protect their pay and conditions, and 60% of these were women. They are generally found in industries where women are heavily concentrated. So the current attack on the award system, particularly on minimum rates, will have a disproportionate effect on women’s pay immediately.
The federal government is moving to abolish State industrial commissions, thereby consolidating the federal government’s control of industrial relations matters. This change alone threatens important gains for pay equity achieved in recent years in the State systems. Beginning with the ground-breaking NSW pay equity inquiry in the late 1990’s, a number of States (including Victoria) have held pay equity inquiries to analyse the nature and causes of pay inequity in their award systems. As a result of these inquiries, the State industrial systems of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania have adopted new equal pay remuneration principles. These principles provided a vehicle for increasing award rates of pay in female dominated jobs and industries where it can be shown that women’s work has been systematically undervalued.
Under these new State principles, women (for example librarians, library assistants and archivists in NSW) recently received significant increases in award pay. There are many more female dominated occupations, which could have benefited from the use of these principles. However, this will now unlikely occur, if the State industrial systems are wiped out. The High Court challenge to Howard’s IR laws is the last line of defence. A decision is due later this year.
Regardless, the push for genuine pay equity has suffered a huge set back with the introduction of the new Federal IR laws. It will set back this quest for years.
There are many more aspects of the conservative agenda being rolled out that deserve analysis. Howard is determined to leave a legacy that can’t be easily reversed by socially progressive forces in the future.
This is a big challenge that the union movement can’t ignore. Our history and our ongoing position in society compels us to take a stand on behalf of the people we represent collectively. The whole conservative agenda is aimed at throwing Australia’s economy onto the international global market like casino chips on a roulette table.
All efforts in the past to establish reasonable standards of living, stable wages, social justice and civil rights are to be counted for nothing. In fact Howard regards such hard won standards as impediments to his grand plan.
This is a serious situation.
Where to from here?
Recent polling has indicated women are leading the change in the opposition to the IR laws. Conversely men, specially of prime age, are not moving much – they think they can look after themselves. We need women to work on the men in their lives – sons, husbands, partners, brothers etc.
A key issue emerging is not so much the threat of the sack – it is more about the attack on living standards – less wages, conditions and job security. The union movement not only needs to maintain the campaign against the IR laws, it needs to also push for what the new laws will look like after 2007, when Beazley gets in. That is a return to a safety net, collective bargaining, industry wide agreements, union right of entry, independent AIRC.
There is a lot of work and campaigning to be done.
