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Issue No. 135 | 10 May 2002 |
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The Costs of War
Interview: Squaring Off Industrial: Heroes Betrayed History: At The Coalface International: Wobblies With Chinese Characters? Politics: Dancing with Trotsky Economics: You Are What You Eat Poetry: Alexander's Bragtime Band Satire: Stott Despoja Celebrates Engagement With Minor Party Review: Painting Paradise
The Soapbox The Locker Room Postcard Bosswatch Week in Review Tool Shed
 Heaps and Heaps of Hate MailNo ChoiceWho Rules Australia?No Wrap for Song Comp Abbott's Contempt
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Interview Squaring OffInterview with Peter Lewis
Last year's WorkCover dispute led to a degree of cynicism within the union movement about the ALP. Can you understand that feeling? I understand it. But what I have been concentrating on is looking at the challenges that are there for the union movement and the Labor Party, coming down the track. I think Jeff Shaw put back in order a fair system of arbitral industrial relations that could serve unions well for a long time. He provided a vital fulcrum against the federal model, and indeed I think he captured the initiative back from the federal approach under the Howard/Reith and now the Howard/Abbott model. It has forced them to slow down their agenda. What we are going to need to do is work hard to develop a Labor approach to things like labour hire, issues like outworkers - clothing outworkers in particular - to the new areas where we are finding changes in the regulation of the economy and changes in the way the economy works itself. It is putting people outside the protection that they might have been able to get before from traditional trade union membership or through industrial tribunals. Issues like labour hire are matters which I think we can work very cooperatively with unions to produce some really beneficial results. Let us take that model that we have already got working well - a way of settling disputes, and look at really progressing things, and responding in a very different way to those sorts of challenges. I'm looking forward to that and we are starting bit by bit to work through those, so there is a big agenda of positive things that we can do. But on WorkCover - do you think there are ways that it could have been handled differently from both sides? I think there are always things that you could do differently if you had the chance. On the other hand, I think you have to go forward. You just have to say, well that is where we have gotten to in a particular debate and let's go forward and make things as beneficial as possible and make the best of the situation and that is the way I think everybody has to approach it. In recent times the news has been dominated by the collapse of the insurers in other industries. Are we now in a position that we can say that the NSW workers' compensation scheme is safe from those sort of problems? I think a couple of features of our scheme, the workers compensations scheme, protect us from some of the issues that have beset public liability, home owners warranty and other general classes of insurance that have been affected by economic changes as well as some cultural changes. I think workers comp is now largely protected from that. I think the product of a good scheme is eternal vigilance and I think we are going to have to work cooperatively with the trade unions in particular, the WorkCover Authority and employers to make sure the scheme delivers to injured workers, but also remains as affordable as we can make it. What would you say some of the positives of the package for the union movement have been? Well the first thing I think that is pretty important is that the NSW Workers Compensation jurisdiction as it is now constituted, is the only jurisdiction, which pays unions the cost of representing their members. There is no other jurisdiction that does that anywhere else in the world. That is pretty incidental. It wasn't something that I thought of as that important in the debate, but I think in the long term that is an important recognition of the role of unions and union officials in representing workers. It seems to me in hindsight to be a logical extension of trying to consolidate union activity in workers compensation and health and safety. That is one thing that I think is a very big positive for the union movement. I think secondly, from a union perspective, are issues like injury management and other aspects of WorkCover Assist. Unions are actively involved in risk reduction for their members, and I think they are able to go back to many of the traditional roles that unions play in safety issues. Not so much a guardian, that's for WorkCover to worry about, but more a spreader of the message for individual workers and workers collectively about safety in the workplace. And obviously, given our industrial relations set-up, working cooperatively with employers to achieve those outcomes. In terms of the upcoming State election, what differences in terms of workers rights do you see emerging between the two parties in the campaign? There are some really significant issues that are going to be dominating the industrial agenda between the parties over the next couple of years. It is always a bit of a crystal ball gazing exercise to work out what is likely to be the defining industrial issue. But I think the good thing about what we have done, is restoring the Commission to the status it had. What we have been able to do is put the conservative parties in a position where they don't want to attack us on industrial relations anymore. We have been able to grab the centre of politics. It has not been easy and there has been a big struggle because there has been an assault against workers by the Federal Government in particular, by unions in particular. It probably reached its height in the MUA dispute. But we have, I think led the charge here in NSW in regaining the centre ground. So now we are looking at issues like labour hire - that is the change in the way the economy is working, and leaving some people traditionally out of those relationships that would have allowed them to be protected - clothing outworkers, the outcomes of the Quinlan Inquiry into the Truck Industry, which was really about the way in which employment conditions of workers can affect safety outcomes. All those sorts of issues I think are big challenges. I don't see the Opposition - the Liberal Party - embracing our side on many of those issues. But I think they will want to run dead, because I think we have managed to capture the centre ground, and I don't think they will try to make those things an issue. I wouldn't trust them if they were ever to be elected that they wouldn't reverse as many of those things as they possibly could, but I think that we have managed to neutralise the issue. John Brogden seems to be trying to portray a bit more of a blue collar and he has come out with a few initiatives, principally that he won't privatise the power industry, which look like he is trying to take a bit of the ground from under Labor's feet. Do you think he will be a tougher proposition that Chickarovski would have been? I have always thought that Mrs Chickarovski was underrated as a political leader. I have seen some unfair things happen in politics and she has really been treated unfairly by her own party. She was thrown into the circumstance of leadership in a completely intolerable way. I suppose she took the opportunity that was presented, so she is as responsible as anyone for that, and I think that Labor and Bob Carr performed very well in that election. We had already staked out the territory. It was clear that we were going to do well. I think that because Peter Collins had established himself over a long period of time, he probably would have done a bit better in that election than she did, but it was really because she had that credibility problem. And from then on, because of the circumstances created by her own Party, she struggled to establish credibility, as opposed to our Leader, Bob Car. Now John Brogden is there, they have not made the same mistake twice, they have given him a bit more time. I think it is important to see some of the elements they are trying to look at. I think we have been very careful about issues like public/private partnerships. We are proceeding with a great deal of caution through that. There is a lot of risk for the public sector in that exercise. There is some benefit - but there are not nearly as many benefits as people might argue. There is no point in getting too excited about things. It is just a mechanism that can improve some service delivery issues, and timetabling. It is not fiscal fools gold, and I think that one of the weaknesses that you see in the Brogden program is that he has embraced it in a very kind of "catch all" way, as if it is some sort of magic formula that is going to deliver great outcomes, and simply if you look at the track record, it won't. It has got some value. It can do some good things, but it has got to be kept in context. So I think that is a bit of an indicator of him not having thought through the implications of all of his policies. In terms of unions and their specific issues, there are a number that are currently before you and the government. I just want to run through a few of them and check their progress. Labour hire regulation you have mentioned it a few times. There is a proposal up to regulate labour hire. Is that something you would like to see completed before the election? I would like to see a line drawn through the labour hire issues before the election, but certainly no later than before the end of next year. There is a bit more consulting to do about the way in which you would re-regulate. We got into this one dimensional argument for twenty years about regulation as opposed to deregulation and a lot of us started to say that really what the labour movement should be talking about is new forms of regulation; new forms of finding incentives; and motivations for people to do the right thing. So I think in labour hire we probably are taking on a pretty big challenge. I give myself a nine month timetable. And certainly a lot of the recommendations of the George Inquiry will be implemented before the election. What about the call for a code of conduct for the call centre industry? What is the NSW Government's agenda on that? I suppose I am only one part of the agenda on that but we have been listening fairly closely to what the union movement has been calling for. We will be working towards a pretty satisfactory resolution from the unions point of view, pretty quickly. We are also in the middle of a five year review of the Industrial Relations Act. Can you give us any indication of the sort of issues that will come out at the end of that process? Interestingly enough, I think that review underlines the fact that it was a pretty good reform, because the five year review hasn't thrown up any calls by any sector or any of the participants for any radical change. There are a lot of smaller issues - some black letter legal issues - which I think can be addressed, I think probably with consensus. And there are a couple of issues that have been thrown up, such as the way in which unfair dismissals work. The approaches to the Commission itself, some of which have been put to the Commission. The Registrar and the President will obviously be responding to these, and there are some issues that are really more in the Attorney General's area, but on the whole I think the review really throws up the fact that the system is fundamentally working. The unfair dismissals one is an interesting one because the unions are actually putting to you the proposition that you should make reinstatement the first priority, rather than cash payment. What was your response when you got that? I am very attracted to that view. I should think that if we go back through the principles of this area of the law, in NSW the system of reinstatement being the objective of action for unfair dismissal has served our jurisdiction, the labour movement and the workforce of NSW very well for 100 years. I am very attracted to that proposition, and I think the union movement would want that to be worked through as far as possible by consensus, and I think we will be working hard to achieve that. Generally, do you share the frustrations of some in the union movement about the process of government and how difficult and long it sometimes takes to get a good idea up? That is a very good question, and yes, I suppose the honest answer to that is that government is just one of those many institutions which has become more complex. We have all seen the Charlie Chaplin 'Modern Times' view of the modern world, but I think that it is important to recognise that it is a frustrating activity. It reminds me of the Max Weber quote, which basically says if you can't hack the idea of gradual reform and chipping away at making the place better, well the other place you can go is back to the churches and build good that way. And I think that should be a way of looking at it. That you can't do better than working it through the system. In the end it is not perfect, but it is better than no one doing anything. Sufficient for the victory of evil that the good people do nothing. What could unions do better to help you get their issues up? I'm always reluctant to say what unions could do better. I think a lot of senior union people still feel a bit reluctant about literally talking to the Minister directly. I like to think that I am available to people to canvas issues. Secondly, I think it is probably true that once you have been a Minister for a while or a senior public servant for a while, it is not always easy to see what is happening in changes in the workplace. The opposite is sometimes true as well, the challenges or forces that operate in government. It might be easier if some unions became more conscious of some of those things. But on the whole, I think we get a pretty good go out of the unions. I think that they are pretty generous with their advice and information, and I have found that when we deal with specific issues we normally get a result. Occasionally there remains a disagreement. I suppose that is inevitable too. In December 2000, last time you spoke to Workers Online, you said your priorities as IR Minister would be to take the initiative in the workplace to put the labour agenda back in the centre. How successful do you think you have been on this front? Well, I think we have been reasonably successful in some ways. We have provided incentives and direct assistance to unions to be in the workplace on safety issues and injury management issues and other areas. I think there is little better you can do, than help energise and resource unions to do that work. We have also tried to make sure that some of these critical workplace issues such as the transport industry issues; the outworker issues - which are not easy ones. We have had to do a lot of persuading work and a lot of hard political work, and I think we have managed to get some of those issues going. Once again, there are always things which you could do better. There are always things on which I would like to have done more. But I think it is not a bad result so far and there is more to come. What gets you fired up about industrial relations? What is the fire in the belly stuff that you are working on? I think the outworker issue is something that really fires me up. I think safety in the workplace is another big issue. I think still far too many people have been injured and killed in the workplace. It is a huge area that inspires me to work harder. I would like to see some real progress on some of the family flexibility issues. I would like to think though that back to the simplest area - the whole idea of the tribunal approach we've got; the whole idea of the award system; the role of the old common rule award system. It means we have set minimums. Set notions of decency in the economy. I also get fired up when I find people are deliberately going and avoiding those areas of decency. Compliance is another big area in respect to both industrial relations and workers compensation I think it is important that we make sure that the 98 percent of employers that are protecting the rights of workers are not disadvantaged in the marketplace by employers that are prepared to push the margin and deprive workers of rights and entitlements and so on. Finally, what difference do you think unions can make in a result next February? A big difference. I think it is important that between now and February, we establish the reasons for unions to support Labor, and I think there are reasons there why the unions would want to see a Carr government re-elected. In the end it is up to us, in the Labor government, and we would like the cooperation of senior union people to make sure that union members generally understand some of the things that we can do, and some of the things that we have already done that make it worthwhile to be re-elected.
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