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Industrial Relations - Commentary
by John Kelly, VTHC Website Co-ordinator
Lost public holidays, no protection from unfair dismissal, restricted rights to union representation; Australian workers face an increasingly uncertain future under John Howard's proposed Industrial Relations changes.
Analysis and comment following the launch of the government's $55million PR exercise indicates widespread distrust of the PM's reasoning and motivation on this issue.
John Howard came in for strong criticism for the apparent U-turn on his commitment, made in July, that public holidays such as Anzac Day, Christmas and Easter would be safeguarded under the new system. Opposition parties and some media analysts have accused him of lying to the electorate following revelations from Industrial Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, that public holidays would, in fact, be negotiable in new Australian Workplace Awards.
This comes as a Newspoll shows the Federal ALP recording a massive jump in approval for its IR policy to 50% while public approval for Howard's IR strategy falls to 26%. The poll also suggests that 49% of the population consider IR to be an "important issue", an increase in almost 10% since Australian trade unions began to campaign strongly against the changes.
Opinion pieces in all the major newspapers asked questions about the $55 million advertising campaign to sell the reforms to the public amid revelations that aspects of the campaign broke electoral laws. On Wednesday 12/10 four-page ads appeared in every major daily newspaper in the country, at a cost of $1 million. The ads did not carry an authorisation declaration, a breach of electoral advertising guidelines, a lapse that could see the government fined for every ad published.
The government will also have greater power to limit the ability of unions to represent and safeguard workers' rights. Under the changes union access to workplaces will be severely restricted and employers will be given greater power to take unions to court over industrial action. For the first time in Australian history the Federal Government will have the power to declare strikes illegal if they are considered to be "a threat to public welfare or to the economy."
Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, will have the power to ban strikes, a dangerous precedent that will seriously erode workers' rights.
John Howard also announced the appointment of Melbourne Business School professor, Ian Harper, to chair the new Fair Pay Commission.
Professor Harper is a conservative Christian who was involved in the Wallis Inquiry into the financial system, set up early in the early days of John Howard's Prime Ministership, aimed at increasing competition. He was also head of the Metropolitan Hospitals Planning Board under Jeff Kennett when the Victorian Hospital system underwent massive systemic change. At the time Freedom of Information requests revealed he'd been paid $35,000 for 12 days' work.
He'll be deciding what constitutes a fair and equitable minimum wage.
Opinions and Analysis
"YOU won't find it anywhere in the thousands of words in yesterday's newspaper advertisements on industrial relations. But the Government wants to increase further the gap in earnings between those on high and low incomes." - Mike Steketee, The Australian
"The upcoming legislation leaves huge groups of workers isolated and vulnerable. Far from creating a modernised industrial relations system, this is an Americanised, pre-modern return to the law of the jungle. Is this what we want in the free trade era? Stripping Australia of its industrial relations system is a dangerous call." - Carla Lipsig-Mumme, The Age
"PRIME Minister John Howard appears to have misled Australians by claiming Christmas Day, Anzac Day and other public holidays would not be negotiable under the Government's proposed workplace changes." - Paul Robinson - Workplace Editor, The Age
"In democracies, immoral policies that advance the interests of the few at the expense of the many have to be buttressed by lies and obfuscation developed by authority figures, packaged by spin doctors and sold to the public." - Kenneth Davidson - The Age
"Prime Minister John Howard has conceded that workers could be bullied into accepting cuts to their conditions under his industrial relations shake-up." 7news
"In order to lose those entitlements it has to actually be specified in the agreement, which is what happens in AWAs at the moment anyway: there's a little three lines added to the agreement that says: this wage rate incorporates penalty rates, shift-loadings, public holiday payments. And that's it: they've all gone." - ABC PM
"Professor Harper is an academic economist who lists his interests as boating and pipe organs. This is just the sort of person Mr Howard would choose to determine the wages of the lowest-paid Australians." - The Age | 
