*****
It has come to the attention of Woolworth's CEO Roger Corbett that shareholders are being gouged unmercifully by this newly discovered phenomenon called an employee.
It appears that these employees - who work doing all the mundane sorts of things involved in running a store, such as operating a checkout or stacking shelves - are actually expecting to be paid in cash for the work that they perform.
This will not do. The money they are defrauding from Woolworth's could actually be spent on dividends to those powerhouse scions of the economic miracle that is Australia, the shareholder.
Without shareholders it is hard to imagine the sun coming up, or even a reason for existence.
The shareholder is the wisest, most acute of minds. Using that never failing tool, the market, to allocate resources in such a manner that they are distributed efficiently.
It is the shareholders that decided that Roger Corbett is worth $8.4million a year.
This is another amazing miracle of the Australian Economy. The other being the peyote buttons the Reserve Bank must be popping if they think that borrowing $1.50 for every dollar you earn is sane and rational.
This economic miracle is why someone who, as we discovered in Workers Online 260, doesn't even know what a truck is, can earn a seven figure sum while appearing to struggle to understand which direction his arse is pointing in.
What is even more disconcerting is that this guy wants to sign individual contracts with teenagers as young as 15. There's a word for that sort of behaviour, and it's not pleasant.
Meanwhile "Uncle" Roger, when not locking himself away with teenage kiddies, seems to think that his ability to pay people in a rock and a shiny thing will enhance the economy.
This sort of reckless intellectual adventurism is not surprising, coming as it does from someone who affected surprise that rising petrol prices have an affect on the economy.
Then again, as we already know, transport is not Corbett's strong suite. He has many truck drivers. Raking it in at $2000 an hour he can afford to lose a few along the way. So it helps if they're on individual contracts. Well, it makes sense on planet Corbett.
Neither is retail acumen his intellectual specialty by all accounts either. Or, for that matter, remembering to put his pants on before his shoes.
If this keeps up we can expect the sort of mental athleticism that will leave our Tool Of the Week dribbling from both sides of his mouth.
The love that weirdos like Roger Corbett has for John Howard's new workplace terror laws probably goes some way to explaining why it's about as popular as Monday.
But meanwhile, on planet Corbett, life carries on at $2000 an hour, which is why petrol hitting $1.40 a litre doesn't bother him. But for those of us in the real world, it goes some way to explaining why you can't find a piece of fruit in Woolworth's that tastes any different to the box that it came in; or why Einstein's like Roger Corbett are the best argument for regulating the workforce we have - starting with executive salaries.
*******
Australian workers have a secret ally in the battle for workplace rights - a man so committed to shifting public opinion that he's unleashed a big business spray on our religious leaders on the basis that, wait for it, they lack compassion.
Hendy has everything required for small screen attention - the beginnings of a comb over, a fruity plum around the vowels, the rhetoric of an escapee from a Charles Dickens novel and all the charm of a critter more used to spinning his webs in a dark corner.
When Hendy gushes forth, you have to sit up and take notice. It's like watching one of the early rounds of Australian Idol.
The man who honed his tact riding shotgun for the political road accident that was Peter Reith - through dogs, balaclavas ,phone cards and all - turned in one of his best pieces of work this week when he hoed into Australia's religious leadership.
After Archbishop Peter Jensen spoke out against the looming attacks on workers rights, joining just about every major religious leader in the nation, the high priest of big business seemed to think he had committed a mortal sin
Hendy's sermon went like this: "How can they look in the face of some 500,000 unemployed in this country and say that they will oppose reforms that will assist these people to get jobs. If that's compassion, I don't know what compassion is about."
It was an interesting foray into morality for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organisation which, to this point in its chequered existence, has stuck religiously, and wisely, to the secular.
Hendy the eco-rat went feral in the absence of a skerrick of economic evidence that the changes will create jobs and a conga line of economists warning it will drive wages down, particularly for lower income earners.
Compassion will play particularly interestingly in the broach church that is modern Australia when Hendy bobs back-up to front the next item on business' agenda - big tax cuts for corporations and the super rich.
When it comes to the economic low road, Hendy, it seems, is a true believer.
His previous contribution to the debate was his contention that proposed workplace changes didn't go far enough.
So what is it with Hendy?
Well, we have a theory ... Long time readers of workers Online may recall us floating the idea that Piers Akerman was an enter-ist - http://workers.labor.net.au/32/d_pierswatch_plant.html - that his right-wing rantings were so extreme they could only be the work of a provocateur, designed to undermine the Right by taking their arguments to absurd levels of self-parody.
Hendy, it seems, is a disciple of the school, even if his ruse is more elaborate. It was not only until I wandered into John Robertson's office this week that I realised how masterful it is. Jutting out of his closet was a strange suit, complete with mask and comb-over - a zip-up, strap-on Peter Hendy!
The truth is emerging - each time the unions are struggling to make a point, Robbo dons the suit and calls a presser; bowls up some ridiculous doggerel and, hey presto, the balance shifts back to the workers! Simple and effective, with just the right tone to have the Fortune 500 club think he's one of their own.
He's even got them kicking into the union campaign. High flyer Geoff Dixon wrote out a cheque this week, without even noticing that the Peter Hendy suit was slipping off. After all, he expects employer reps to have two heads, four hands and a hole where the heart should be.
So relax when Hendy fronts up to the media, remember he is on our side and recognise him for the post-modern genius we have created.
About 50 labour hire workers at the Artarmon call centre, employed on one-week contracts, received the news, last Friday, after getting only a 'handful of calls during the week.
The Sydney centre, established for overflow calls had not received the traffic anticipated, despite the wall of advertising promoting the number.
It is unknown whether the other two centres in Canberra and Melbourne will continue to operate.
The lay-offs follow a week of confusion where the majority of callers were told to wait until the legislation came out.
Workers Online called with enquiries about unfair dismissal, penalty rates and unlawful dismissal under the new changes and in all instances was referred to the award inquiry service WageLine.
WageLine could not answer questions about the proposed reforms.
"We can only give advice on current federal awards," the hotline said.
Operators at WorkChoices admitted they did not have enough detail to handle enquiries.
"At this stage we don't have too much information; it's still going through Parliament," one WorkChoices operator said.
The response from other operators was that the reforms were "just proposed" and wouldn't be coming through for six months.
The government has set up three call centres to deal with questions as part of its $100 million tax-payer funded spend to sell its unpopular changes.
Workers Online understands WorkChoice operators are given scripted answers to questions and cannot answer any further questions.
Unions NSW secretary John Robertson said despite appearances, the Government continued to dodge people's genuine questions about the reforms.
"What were seeing here is the government spending money that isn't theirs on call centres and ads that provide no real information on their changes," Robertson said.
"It's about time they came clean and told working people that these laws are simply the agenda of big business."
John Howard's new workplace regime includes provisions for �greenfields� employers to write their own wages and conditions schedules.
The documents will last for 12 months but, already, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is pushing for that to be extended to five years.
At the same time, a range of prohibitions will be placed on unions trying to defend negotiated wages and conditions.
New laws will severely curtail their rights to bargain, enter workplaces, recruit, or engage in industrial action.
A whole series of existing conditions, agreed to by employers, will become prohibited matters and union members will be liable for fines of up to $33,000 if they even ask for them.
Prohibited matters will include equal pay for equal work; trade union training leave; paid meetings; prohibitions on AWAs; mandating union involvement in dispute resolution; and restrictions on the use of contractors or labour hire.
Rights of entry will be restricted, and eliminated, in the case of greenfields sites and workplaces where all employees are on AWAs.
Unions will be forced to undertake time-consuming postal ballots before engaging in "protected" industrial action, while employers will retain the right to lockout their workforces, or chosen individuals, with three days' notice.
Employers and third parties will be able to go to court to have "protected" actions called off.
The AIRC will also be able to halt legal stoppages if there is evidence of pattern bargaining (government code for equal pay claims across different sites), harm to a third party, or a union has failed to "genuinely" negotiate.
Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, said the regime would strip "any semblance of choice" from working Australians.
"This package is an extreme attack on freedom of choice and collective bargaining. The Prime Minister is using the power of the state to force people onto AWAs because they weren't choosing to take them up.
Besides the "greenfields" provision, existing businesses will be able to force all new employees onto AWAs, further undermining collective agreements.
Howard has also moved to strip protections from millions of Australians on state awards. When their agreements expire, they will only be entitled to five core conditions - the basic rate, personal leave, annual leave, unpaid maternity leave, and a theoretical 38-hour week.
With the impending scrapping of the no-disadvantage test, that measures AWAs against award entitlements, those conditions will also be the baseline for new individual contracts.
Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, has indicated even those protections will be rubbery. Annual leave can be halved to two weeks, and employers will be able to average out the 38-hour ordinary week over a full year.
Robertson questioned the value of legislating for ordinary hours, at all, when there is no provision for overtime, penalty or statutory holiday payments.
Billy is one of the stars of the Howard regime's $100 million campaign to convince Australians they will benefit from lower wages and inferior conditions.
WorkChoices, a 68-page booklet produced to spruik the radical workplace rewrite, introduces "Billy" as a new-starter at a clothing shop who signs a take-it or leave-it AWA that strips him of a range of negotiated conditions.
"The AWA Billy is offered explicitly removes the award conditions for public holidays, rest breaks, bonuses, annual leave loadings, allowances, penalty rates and shift/overtime loadings," the document bearing the seal of "Australian Government" reads.
"Because Billy wants to get a foothold in the job market, he agrees to the AWA and accepts the offer."
"WorkChoices" makes it clear that Billy will have no choice about being covered by an award or collective agreement.
"The job offered to Billy is contingent on him accepting an AWA," it says.
Prime Minister, John Howard, has taken personal responsibility for Billy.
He told ABC interviewer, Kerry O'Brien, last week, he had asked for Billy to be inserted in the government publication so "we would be completely transparent about that kind of situation".
Howard said it would be reasonable to cut Billy's entitlements because, in the example quoted, he had been out of work and had had somebody bargain on his behalf.
When the Prime Minister was asked to confirm the same would apply to "many, many people", irrespective of their personal situations, he refused to answer the question.
Unions NSW secretary, John Robertson, said Billy blew two key government arguments out of the water.
"It demolishes the central argument on which individual agreements are based - that individuals have the same bargaining power as corporations," Robertson said.
"Who, in their right mind, would agree to losing a whole range of entitlements if they had genuine bargaining power?
"Equally, it gives the lie to assurances that this government is not about cutting wages and conditions. If employers can force all newcomers to work for inferior wages and conditions, it's not going to be long until everybody's living standards are affected."
The "WorkChoices" admissions came after months of Prime Ministerial and Ministerial evasions, and denials, about the likely effects of their workplace agenda.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics circular reveals the methods of pay setting component of the next two-yearly survey of Employee Earnings and Hours has been canned, ensuring there will be no statistical review of workplace change before Australians cast their ballots in the 2007 federal election.
"The ABS has decided not to include questions on pay setting arrangements in the 2006 EEH survey," the circular says.
The ABS is a federal government agency that comes under the control of Treasurer, Peter Costello, an aggressive advocate of secret individual contracts.
Methods of Pay Setting took up nearly half of the 2004 survey into Earnings and Hours.
But its key findings were a huge embarrassment to the federal government, revealing that, in the eight years since workers were given the "choice" of signing AWAs, less than 2.5 percent had taken it.
Since then, Canberra has turned choice over to employers, giving them the ability to force workers onto AWAs as a condition of employment. It has paid to have pattern AWAs developed, sparing business the cost, and scrapped the no-disadvantage test so employers can use individual contracts to undercut awards and other negotiated agreements.
The government has ditched the stats-based approach and gone for numbers supplied by its Office of the Employment Advocate.
Just last month, there was a blaze of publicity for a Melbourne function celebrating the take-up of the 750,000th AWA.
The figure, from the Office of the Employment Advocate, came less than two months after its spin doctor, Bonnie Laxton-Blinkhorn, told Workers Online it had no idea how many AWAs were in operation.
Laxton-Blinkhorn explained that the OEA keeps no current total, just the number of registrations since 1996.
Given that the majority of AWAs are for casual or part-time workers and that about 25 percent of Australians change their jobs every year, the running total is next to meaningless.
The ABS' 2004 data was also quoted by both the Prime Minister and Workplace Relations Minister to bolster their argument that employees would be better off on AWAs. Andrews claimed the differential, with collective agreements, was 29 percent while Howard settled for 13 percent.
When the ABS information was unpacked, however, both those claims were discredited.
Howard and Andrews chose weekly wages, for their comparisons, but ABS data revealed AWA employees worked significantly longer hours than collective agreement counterparts. Howard and Andrews included managers in their comparisons, and chose to leave out millions of Australians employed on state awards.
When researchers rectified those anomalies, they found hourly rates were higher for people collective agreements and that, for women, the differential was 11 percent.
Griffith University academic, David Peetz, used the ABS data to conclude that, across the board, AWA workers earned two percent less than those on awards or collective agreements.
"As Minister Andrews said, the facts on AWAs speak for themselves," he said.
Those facts will not be available in the build-up to the next federal election.
The Office of Workplace Services admitted to a 2004 Senate hearing that, in the 2002-03 year, it hadn't prosecuted a single employer, anywhere in Australia, for breaching an award or agreement.
The Office, which covers about five million workers on federal arrangements, said it had received 5254 complaints, during that year, and that 3500 had been "substantiated".
From that workload, it recovered owed monies on three occasions.
By comparison, the NSW Industrial Relations Department, responsible for around 79,000 employees, prosecuted 484 breaches in 2002 and another 256 in 2003.
In those two years, it won back $3.03 million and $2.5 million for dudded workers.
Individual unions, like the CFMEU and FSU, have won back more than $10 million for rorted members in a single year.
Howard is transferring all state enforcement responsibilities, under the new workplace regime, to his Office of Workplace Services.
"Whether you are an employee or an employer your rights will be protected under WorkChoices by the Office of Workplace Services," the government's taxpayer-funder IR booklet confirms.
"OWS will be an easily accessible 'one stop shop' for all enforcement and compliance activities.
Unions NSW representative, Matt Thistlewaite, says the move is part of a pattern of taking compliance functions from independent bodies to hand-picked creations of the federal government.
"They don't trust anyone or anything that is independent," Thistlewaite says.
"We have seen this with the establishment of the Office of the Employment Advocate, the Building Industry Taskforce and, most recently, the appointment of a hand-picked economist to take over minimum wage setting from the �IRC.
"This government writes the rules, then appoints its own umpire.
"All the old conventions, about impartiality and independence, have been junked."
Thistlewaite estimates that if federal government succeeds in its bid to wrest control of state IR systems, the OWS will become the compliance agency responsible for more than nine million workers.
The tactics of sacking a workforce and shifting them out with balaclava-ed guards and dogs on chains would have been lawful under the proposed changes, legal experts have warned.
Under government proposals, an employer suspected of planning to dismiss workers in a situation like the 1998 waterfront dispute can sit silently while unions attempt the near-impossible task of proving discrimination.
The government intends turning current practise on its head when it comes to injunctions stopping employers from sacking people on the basis of union membership.
"The employers are the ones with all the information and the ones at the meetings," says Turner Freeman partner Steven Penning. "Because such decisions are made in a clandestine way, it is extremely hard for unions to find witnesses or documents to back them up."
Back in 1998, when Patrick Stevedores tried to use security men to keep unionised workers out and bring contract workers in, the law said bosses had to prove they weren't sacking wharfies just because they belonged to a union.
That law stopped Patricks' in its tracks because the company could not convince the court that this was not their plan. As such, the MUA was able to get a court order stopping the sackings.
"The importance of this requirement has been recognised by the High Court," says barrister David Chin. But in a couple of obscure sentences in the back of the Government's latest 60 page IR document, Howard has revealed his plan to make sure the bosses get their way in the future.
Under the planned IR changes, when someone comes to the court asking for a court order to stop workers from being sacked for being members of a union, the employer can sit back and say nothing while the person bringing the complaint has to prove it.
"It is very easy for an employer to say nothing the unions suspect ever happened," says Penning and Chin.
The Business Council of Australia, headed by a group of multi-millionaires, confirmed, last week, it had asked member companies to cough-up, so it could counter the ACTU's $8 million advertising campaign.
The Business Council ads will run in support of federal government's $100 million publicity spend.
The BCA is an aggressive backer of individual contracts; award stripping; removing unfair dismissal rights and taking minimum wage claims away from the AIRC - all core planks in Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews', program.
High-profile members of the BCA include Wesfarmers boss Michael Chaney, Qantas chief, Geoff Dixon, BHP head Chip Goodyear, Leightons CEO, Wal King, Macquarie Bank's Allan Moss and his Commonwealth Bank counterpart, David Murray.
Their latest reported annual incomes were $6.12 million, $3.022 million, $6.4 million, $35 million, $18.5 million and $5.5 million, respectively.
While average fulltime Australian incomes have moved 26 percent since 1998, the Business Council elite have helped themselves to average 129 percent hikes, over the same period.
If new Howard Government laws succeed in holding down workers' incomes, as similar moves did in New Zealand, Business Council members can expect substantial increases in their "earnings".
Most collect sizeable bonuses on top of seven-figure base salaries.
King, for example, collects a $23 million bonus, this year, while Commonwealth Bank shareholders supplied Murray with a $17 million retirement package.
A Business Council spokesman said, once workplace change was achieved, the organisation would launch a campaign for lower tax rates on business and high-income earners.
Professor Ian Harper bagged the Harvester Judgement of 1907, where the living wage principle was established, in an article for the conservative thinktank, the Centre of Independent (Sic) Studies.
While the conservative press is talking up Professor Harper's credential as an economist and Christian, his writing on the minimum wage reinforce the worst fears of workers that wages are about to head south.
Writing for the CIS Policy magazine, Professor Harper noted how other countries weren't burdened with the need to pay a socially determined minimum wage:
"...other countries did not try to divorce wages from the low levels of productivity characteristic of high-employment manufacturing industry. Employers in the sweatshops of lower Manhattan were not obliged to raise wages to 'fair and reasonable' levels....
"In reality, the standard of fairness and reasonableness was set by the higher wages paid (and afforded) by higher productivity primary industry. It was considered unfair and unreasonable to pay lower wages to those whose employers...could not afford to pay wages at the same levels.
" Faced with the choice between greater wage dispersion and lack of international cost competitiveness, Australia chose the latter (while, faced with the same choice, the US chose the former). http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/aut2002/polaut02-9.pdf
NSW Minister for Industrial Relations, John Della Bosca, says the appointment of Professor Harper was an indication that minimum wages would no longer be based on the cost of living.
"The Commonwealth Minister has previously claimed minimum wages in Australia are $70 a week too high," Della Bosca says. "It appears that Professor Harper has been hand-picked to fix that."
"There is a school of thought that says employers shouldn't have to pay a wage that gives an employee the ability to clothe, feed and shelter themselves
"This concept of paying the lowest wage that anyone will work for flies in the face of a 100 year old Australian tradition of fairness, based on the Harvester Judgement."
Surprise over the "waitress" featured on the front page of the Daily Telegraph the day after Howard's latest IR announcement turned to cynicism when it was revealed her employers were her brothers.
Betty Wehbe, who works at Parramatta's Ray & Lou's Caf�, was touted as a waitress who "approved of the changes" and was keen to trade in her holidays for extra money.
However, while Ms Wehbe does waitress at the caf�, it has emerged that she is not a mere employee.
Ray and Lou's Caf� is owned by her brothers and local business identities, Louis, Ray and Joe Wehbe.
Ms Wehbe and her friend Richard Daha, who owns the Have If Off hairdressing salon in Parramatta, repeatedly refused to confirm whether she was related to the three men who ran the caf�.
"I don't want anything to do with this," said Ms Wehbe.
Mr Daha, who strongly approves of the proposed workplace changes, contacted Workers Online to complain that he has enormous trouble finding hairdressers whose lifestyles he approves of.
"All they want to do is the work they have to do, get paid and go to clubs," he said.
In return for trading in sick pay, holiday pay, rostered days off, public holidays, overtime, leave loading, meal and tool allowances, travel allowance, long service leave except that provided by the NSW Long Service Board and redundancy payments, Ian Reynolds Building Pty Ltd offered a worker $20 per hour.
CFMEU Sydney organiser Tony Papa said the offer fell well short of provisions under the award and enterprise agreements.
"Under an enterprise agreement he would be paid $19.09 an hour, $3.50 an hour productivity payment, $25 a day travel allowance, $2 an hour site allowance," Papa said.
"And that's not including things such as sick pay and annual leave."
Papas said the AWA also fell short of health and safety provisions.
The agreement states: "Shoes to be removed at all times when working in occupied houses".
"What it's saying is don't drop anything on your foot because you won't be covered by workers compensation," Papas said.
"All it does is talk about the client, which isn't bad, but it makes little mention of the worker's rights."
The plan proposes to use the Commonwealth's corporations power to assume control of state awards and agreements.
Initially these "transitional agreements" cover conditions, but once they expire they will be at the mercy of the negotiation table.
All that will be protected are the five minimum guarantees offered by the new Low Pay Commission.
The minimum conditions include the basic wage, sick leave, annual leave, hours and unpaid maternity leave.
This means that other entitlements such as shift and holiday allowances and paid maternity leave will be up for negotiation.
The arrangement leaves about 800,000 workers on state awards and agreements in NSW in limbo.
Public servants such as nurses could also be exposed with the area health services they work for as they could be categorised as corporations.
AUSIRAQ union solidarity Jazz night
6.30pm
Tuesday 18 Oct.
CFMEU auditorium
12 Railway St. Lidcombe
Dinner & live jazz $25
Kids & unwaged $15.00
Home cooked Iraqi food
To book & pay by credit card ph. Ken at APHEDA 9264 9343
All money to Iraqi trade unions
Organised by Australia/Iraq Trade Union SoIidarity.
Call Lynn 0439 640118 or Michael 0406 020702 for info
One Year Down & Two to Go - Can Labor Win in 2007?
With John Singleton (Advertising Executive), Geoff Walsh (former ALP National Secretary) & Julie Owens MP (Member for Parramatta)
When: Wednesday 26 October from 6.00pm to 7.30pm
Where: LHMU Auditorium, 187 Thomas Street Haymarket
Cost: Free
Chair: Michael Samaras, Secretary NSW Fabian Society
Sheil Be Right
Kings Cross film festival is screening "Democracy II Sheil Be Right." A very funny 6 minute doco by Yvette Andrews about Pat Sheil's attempt to win the seat of Wentworth as the Independent Idiot Candidate. Starring Pat Sheil, Meredith Burgmann, Bob Carr, Andrew Peacock and Harry M Miller among others. 8pm, 22 October, Fitzroy Gardens (Allamein Fountain) Kings Cross, (byo picnic rug etc)
Rally for Saharawi Justice
Rally in support of Saharawi Political Prisoners. 1pm - Thursday October 20, Parliament House, Macquarie Street.
The Moroccan police and military continue to use violence to put down peaceful demonstrations in Western Sahara. The Moroccan Government is denying Saharawis their right to self-determination and are illegally exploiting their natural resources (fisheries, phosphate and oil). Prisoners are detained in appallingly cramped conditions and peaceful demonstrators are routinely bashed. All the Saharawi people want is the UN Sponsored referendum on independence which was promised in 1991.
Organised by the Australia Western Sahara Association.
The idea was planted long ago for IR reforms, yet working Australia were never really consulted. This deal has obviously been the brainstorm of the coalition and business groups. Here is an extract from Malcolm Farr's article in the Daily Telegraph:
A senior minister said the Government had been waiting four years to pass the Trade Practices legislation and about the same time on the student union measures.
However, he said, if the industrial relations legislation were halted by Senator Joyce there would be serious consequences for the Nationals.
Prime Minister John Howard said Government MPs would discuss the floor crossing "in a totally civilised fashion � I'm not going to go into the details of that".
Summary conclusion:
The PM and business leaders have taken it upon themselves to dictate what is good for our economic future - in the words similar to J.F.K 'ask not what business can do for you, but ask what you can do for business'.
I am sure this is not how the PM would phrase it, and I'm not sure Barnaby will hold up under the pressure.
John McPhilbin, NSW
Oh joy! Long live the future, where as robotic, enterprise workers we can finally negotiate unilaterally with our employers, rather than having to withstand interference from those pesky unions. They're always sticking their noses into areas that have nothing to do with them, like social policy and community values.
God knows, that's what the Tories were elected for, to paternalistically take care of those issues so we could simply grind away for 8 - 12 hours a day and then go home to our empty houses. None of us have time for relationships anymore! The future prosperity of the economy is far too important to be enjoying ourselves! We need to keep striving for the ever-disappearing finish line, according to the Lying Rodent.
And that damn ACTU, always giving the conservatives a hard time! Don't you wish it would just die a slow death so market forces could prevail once and for all, leaving the invisible hand of the market to work out what's best for us all?
Unemployment? No such thing in John Howard's Australia. Don't have a job? That's OK, cause have the Liberal Coalition government got a deal for you!! Just sign here, and you'll get a minimum wage for 60 hours a week work with no penalties or overtime, no annual leave loading and no prospect of a pay rise til the Fair Pay Commission kindly decides to give you one. What a deal! Don't like it? Well dont bother knocking on Centrelink's door cause they won't be so understanding. 26 weeks with no Centrelink payment! Woo - hoo!
Welcome to the brave new (and incredibly scary) world.
Julianne Taverner, NSW
I was considering the new exploitive IR Laws and now have a horror story the government would love:
You are unemployed and receiving benefits from Centrelink. You attend an interview and are offered a job. You review the individual contract they wish you to sign and find that the conditions aren't good and would not be suitable, so you refuse to sign, and so you refuse the job.
The Employer can, if they like, inform Centrelink that you have "Refused suitable work" - so then you lose your benefits.
These new laws are amoral and benefit only the corporate citizens of Australia. Workplace Choices? Sounds like people will lose the right to choose the place they work if they are on Centrelink Payments - they will *have* to sign that contract or starve!
This isn't the Australia my forefathers fought for - a classed society with no chance of children being able to better than his father.
Jeff Litchfield, Qld
Why can't John Howard tell the truth for once.
Instead of all this nonsense about - I'll stand by my record - I'm the best friend Australian Workers ever had -
Workers are going to much better off
What he should say is:
I've been waiting 30 years to destroy the power of Unions and if I get my way on I R this will be a good start and hopefully the end of them helping the under privilaged.
Now that we have control of the Senate I will absolutely abuse this power to achieve my long term goals.
Hal Crossing, WA
THE LAW HAS NOT YET CHANGED, BUT MY EMPLOYER HAS ALREADY TRIED TO BULLY ME INTO ACCEPTING 10 CENTS PER ANNUM IN EXCHANGE FOR RECEIVING MY HOLIDAY LOADING IN MY HOURLY RATE. WHEN I REFUSED, HE CONSIDERED THAT I DID NOT UNDERSTAND. I ASSURED HIM I UNDERSTOOD ALL RIGHT. HE THEN TRIED AGAIN THE NEXT DAY, BULLY TACTICS. HE THEN SAID HE WOULD DO IT ANYWAY. I SAID GO AHEAD AND HAD TO REMIND HIM THAT I HAD A CONTRACT THAT I WOULD WORK UNDER THE STATE CLERKS AWARD. UNFORTUNETLY THE AWARD WILL IN ITSELF PUSH PEOPLE TO INDIVIDUAL CONTRACTS. BUT I HELD THE LINE AND REFUSED. MY EMPLOYER HAS A REPUTTATION OF NOT GIVING SACKED WORKERS THEIR LEGAL ENTITLEMENTS AND CONSIDEDRED IF I LEFT I WOULD NOT RECEIVE MY LOADING, AS I WOULD HAVE AGREED TO IT BEING IN AN HOURLY RATE. I MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT I WAS NOT GIVING UP AN AWARD RIGHT FOR 10 CENTS PER ANNUM.
MIND YOU MY BOSS SAID THAT HE WAS THE GOOD GUY. I WOULD HATE TO SEE THE BAD ONE.
UNFORTUNETLY THE PREDOMINANTLY YOUNG WORK FORCE DO NOT UNDERSTAND AND HAVE JUST GONE ALONG WITH IT. GIVING AWAY BARGANING CHIPS IS NOT THE WAY TO WIN.
LONE SOLDIER, NSW
The first one is the blatant assault on the rights at work - it is being played out on the national political stage between the Howard Government with the backing of the big business lobby and the Australian community. It is rightly dominating the news as the government ducks and weaves around its economic agenda - to drive Australian wages down.
But in the shadow is a separate, more insidious attack - on an institution that has been integral to Australian way of life for the past 120 years - the trade union movement.
There have been whispers in the press - 'crackdown on union power' was one headline in the Murdoch press, using all the subtleties of language that have given us 'tax relief'' and 'the war on terror '. But the violence in the attack on unions is only becoming apparent as the detail of the government proposals come to light.
Trade union right of entry into workplaces will be severely curtailed: there will be no right of entry for discussion with employees on AWA's; where policing award, union officials will be required to provide particulars of breach investigated. It's all about strangling union activity.
Employers will control union meetings, determining where they can be held and can deny unions access to employment records.
There are also sever restrictions on the issues that be included in collective agreements - agreements can no longer include paid union meetings, union picnic days and trade union training leave - all provisions developed in recognition of the constructive role a well-organised workforce can play in a business. Instead, under these laws, individuals will be liable for fines of $33,000 - just for asking for these rights.
The right to take industrial action will be severely restricted - with complex secret ballots before strike action required and 20 per cent of cost of ballot to be born by the union. The government is also given extraordinary powers to declare any legal action unlawful if it deems to meet the very broad definition of damaging the national economy. And if you don't comply, your employer or any other business can personally sue you for any economic loss they incur.
In contrast, the laws fast track the growing practise of employer lock-outs - making Australia the only country in the world with one set of rules for workers and the other for employers exercising their industrial rights. And the Australian Industrial relations Commission, which used to be able to compel employers to negotiate and impose a settlement is they did not, can now only sit back and watch as workers are starved into submission.
The laws also curtail the rights of unions to represent workers during disputes, doing away with some of the legal grounds that have been successful in the past - including the freedom of association protections that won the MUA the Waterfront dispute.
Unions will also be barred from representing small businesses and contractors in parallel changes to the Trade Practices Act, stripping thousands of workers of the current rights they have to be protected by a union..
And the shining glory: new businesses will be able to negotiate agreements governing their future operations with themselves - a wonderful incentive to restructure and reconfigure companies if ever there was one!
If that's not enough, the federal government is using it's purchasing power to punish employers who offer workers collective agreements and, in the construction industry, setting up a police force to belt the union. If you are a construction worker you can now be jailed for refusing to divulge what goes on at a union meeting.
The real danger the union movement confronts is that these laws will make it impossible for them to carry out their core functions - organise workers, bargain and coordinate action. And if they can't provide these functions and people leave the movement, the BCA's and ACCIs of this world will say it's because unions are no longer relevant. It's legislative manslaughter dressed up as historical determinism.
At every turn these laws are dripping with malice and gratuitous violence to an institution that has done so much to secure the Australian way of life. And they have the gall to spend our money creating cover for this historical grab for power.
This, more than anything, is the legacy John Howard is setting for himself, the ultimate political prize, the destruction of the movement that created his political opponent. Because he knows without the unions, the ALP is nothing.
Peter Lewis
Editor
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