Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.

Labour reforms must be fair

ACTU Secretary, Greg Combet, has called on the Howard government to consult with unions and workers and not just listen to big business before making any decisions regarding IR reform.

When the coalition parties take control of the Senate on July 1, John Howard will hold in his hand what no prime minister has had for 25 years a legislative blank cheque.

In recent weeks, every extreme idea on the conservative side of politics has been dusted-off and rolled out. Big business has got in on the act, goading the government to introduce radical changes to the industrial relations system.

Lofty statements of ambitions for the nation's economic future have been used to dress up a list of tired and nasty big-business ideas designed to attack employee rights.

On the eve of a cabinet meeting to discuss the legislative agenda in industrial relations, the Business Council of Australia publicly urged the government not to get bogged down in debates about fairness.

Instead the BCA, a business group representing the chief executives of Australia's largest companies (the top 40 of whom, according to this newspaper, collectively paid themselves $173 million last year) wants the government to completely rewrite workplace rules.

One of the radical suggestions the BCA is urging is that the government abolish all awards and replace them with six minimum conditions.

For 1.6 million workers reliant on the award safety net this would mean reductions in real rates of pay and the abolition of basic entitlements such as redundancy pay, overtime and weekend payments, public holidays, lunch and rest breaks, the 38-hour week and a host of other rights.

Other changes proposed by the BCA would undermine the pay, conditions and job security of an additional 4.2 million employees covered by union and non-union collective agreements.

Except for a privileged few at the very top of the labour market, the bargaining power of most employees would be weakened. This is not a recipe for prosperity, as the BCA argues. It is a prescription for falling living standards, rising inequality and increased pressure on families.

The government will be making a serious mistake if it only listens to its friends in the upper echelons of the business community when formulating any industrial relations reforms. Yet all the signs are that it is almost exclusively working behind closed doors with these big-business insiders.

There has been no public review of the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, no genuine process of consultation with unions or employees and no research into contemporary workplace issues.

No case has been made for change.

Worse still, there are insufficient plans to address the real issues constraining Australia's economic efficiency, export performance, productivity and growth skills shortages and the deficit of investment in infrastructure and research and development. Issues the ACTU has been raising for years.

Despite this, we can expect the government to dress up and market its IR reforms in the cloak of economic efficiency. The groundwork is already being prepared in the form of a debate about a unitary national industrial relations system.

Naturally, in an economy the size of Australia's, there is superficial attraction to the idea of a single IR system. But the real issues concern the outcome and impact of any IR changes on working families, employers and the labour market.

If the government was serious about creating a single national system it would seek the co-operation and agreement of the states; engage in a genuine dialogue about the issues; and minimise opposition by committing to maintain current employment rights, minimum wages, award safety net standards and collective bargaining rights.

The ACTU would engage constructively in such a process. We have a good track record in this regard. But we will not support a sham process designed to deliver a predetermined and biased outcome that will hurt employees and undermine living standards.

Industrial relations is a test of the government's maturity and preparedness to govern for all. Having achieved rare control of both houses of parliament, does the government have the integrity to work with all parties including unions and state governments, or will it listen only to big business?


More Archive

More Latest News

Powered By three squares