Industrial relations campaign update
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Kim Beazley has made Labor’s position on the IR legislation clear: “I can tell you this: we’re not beating about the bush with his legislation,” he told a cheering audience. “If we get into office in 18 months to two years’ time, we’re going to rip it up.”
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Treasury told a Senate estimates hearing it “reached conclusions about likely changes to productivity” as a result of the WorkChoices package, but the Government won’t release the information. After Labor suggested this might be because the advice did not support the Government’s rhetoric, Treasury tried to back away from its earlier admission. It had produced “indicative estimates of employment effects under various scenarios”, but had not produced a detailed report. Wayne Swan says this is even worse: “Can you imagine a Government coming out with the biggest change in industrial relations in a hundred years and not doing any comprehensive modelling on that? They’d done some initial modelling, it didn’t back up the Government’s claims, so they’ve decided not to do any more modelling because they know they can’t get the evidence to back up their claims.”
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John Howard will today guillotine debate on the industrial relations legislation in order to force it through the House of Representatives without adequate scrutiny. The Bill requires far more time because, as Tim Colebatch put it, “This is an almost-impenetrable thicket of blah.”
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Don’t expect the Senate to be given a better chance to analyse the proposals. Under the terms of reference of the Senate inquiry, it will be unable to consider some of the worst attacks on collective bargaining, including “secret ballots, termination of bargaining agreements, pattern bargaining, remedies for unprotected industrial activity, strike pay, right of entry, award simplification, freedom of association and civil penalties on union officials”. But even that’s not enough for the Liberals. They now want to adopt the “unprecedented model of the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ cases each nominating a panel of four experts to debate the WorkChoices package”. This is because the Government wants to ignore the thousands of submissions that have been made by concerned members of the public.
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The Financial Review reports — under the headline “No choice: 38-hour week under threat” (pdf) — that “employment law experts said the bill included a loophole contradicting Mr Howard’s promise” to protect the 38-hour week. Bosses can force their employees to work “reasonable additional hours” over and above their ordinary time, with no penalty rates. Professor Andrew Stewart said the working hours guarantee “is a stunt because it is so full of loopholes.”
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According to The Australian, “Businesses will be able to impose workplace agreements on staff without seeking their approval — or even consulting them — under John Howard’s new industrial changes.” Employers may lodge an agreement without the employee’s consent. It will be binding until overturned by a court, which involves considerable time and expense. This will allow employers to force low-paid employees onto AWAs, because a court challenge would be too costly and time-consuming for most workers to run.
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Labor’s claim that 60 000 WorkChoices booklets were pulped at a cost of $40 000 turned out to be false. In fact, the numbers were 458 000 and $152 000. Worse still, “6 million copies of the revised brochure were printed, but only 178 000 of them had been distributed by November 1″ — in other words, 97% of the booklets are sitting in a warehouse somewhere, and will probably be dumped because the propaganda campaign was such a failure. However,
Labor revealed that a company called Salmat had been awarded an $800,000 contract to distribute them, and also that the company and its principals gave political donations totalling $120,000 to the Liberal and National parties. At least some people have got something out of it.
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The South Australian Government has set up a website encouraging people to tell Coalition MPs that WorkChocies Won’t Work.
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The Government’s absurd ideas about ordinary workers was revealed by Kevin Andrews’ suggestion that they could bring their accountant along to negotiate an AWA. In Question Time on Monday, Kim Beazley put this idea in its proper perspective: “Does the minister expect nurses, social workers, cleaners, bricklayers and apprentices to all bring their accountants? Minister, to assist in negotiations should Australian workers also bring along their butlers to help them make the tea?”
How can Howard get away with this? He is just riding roughshod over everyone. Half the population is terrified of what he will do next. We’re supposed to be a representative democracy, but instead we’ve ended up with a dictatorship. Are we still allowed to say anything negative about him or do we have to lie and say what a wonderful leader he is?
hahaha, when A Current Affair is bashing your packing, you know you’ve lost the masses.
The first paragraph is typically Labor and sounds like their infamous Rollback promise that they apply to all Liberal policy and then a year or so and an opposition leader later, Labor changes stance and moves onto the next hot issue.
Work Choices seems to be coming up quite often in referrers.
Really appreciate your hard work and dedication in keeping us up-to-date on the latest IR happenings. The whole thing is black sticky farce from start to finish and it’s infuriating to know that the government is selectively deaf to the overwhelming outrage at these “proposed” (in other words, they’re going to happen) changes.
I suppose good old Barnaby Joyce will be the court of last resort, though last i saw in my local paper he was more worried about ‘gay’ shows screening on SBC. Yawn to you, Barnaby, get a freaking clue.
It’s all rather depressing, really.
‘SBS’, I mean.
Are these guys calling for fair or unfair dismissal of workers ?http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17204895%255E661,00.html
Personally I say it’s about bloody time we employers were given the absolute right to fire scumbags and crooks in the imterests of the majority of our decent workers. Let the birds of a feather flock together.
Observa, in my experience the scumbags and crooks are not the ones with tools in their hands.
I seem to think that all this IR debate may be a smokescreen for other issues.
What other laws or policies are going to be slipped through at the same time as these so called reforms.
As IR goes i can see arguments from all sides,
Ive worked with people that are just plain lazy scamming pricks, who will do anything they can to sleaze money from their boss for no output.
Then there is the boss that exploits good hard working people, knowing that they cant afford to leave, or go up north for better money.
Then there is companys that have sub contractors working for them, and let them keep working for them when they are trading insolvent, and know full well that they cant pay them, this to me is one of the lowest acts as far as IR goes.
But arent we all missing something, how much percent a year does all the sleazy policy makeing politicians pay go up each year. Maybe they should have some employment reforms- Basically if they dont perform why cant they be sacked and not given any more benifits or salary afterwards.
IT all comes down to Morals if you ask me, If you work for someone, work as though you would for youself. Same as paying someone, some employers i know should ask themselves if they would get out of bed each day for what they are paying some of their workers.
If you are a decent person you should be treated like one
If you act like an arsehole, dont fn cry when you get treated like one
I guess you’ve all seen this. This kid deserves a medal. Solid gold:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/booklet-bandit-exposes-waste/2005/11/13/1131816796850.html?oneclick=true