Howard Lets Loose Against Unions

Howard’s industrial relations election statement was sparse. Details of how extreme the changes will be when the "gloves are off" may not be clear until the new Senate sits. But there will be real workplace difficulties facing millions of working families. The current workplace regime is harsh and unfair. But we have not seen the worst of it, with "no holds barred".

Howard’s industrial relations election statement was sparse. Details of how extreme the changes will be when the "gloves are off" may not be clear until the new Senate sits. But there will be real workplace difficulties facing millions of working families. The current workplace regime is harsh and unfair. But we have not seen the worst of it, with "no holds barred".

Howard is an industrial relations warrior. Pro-employer means undermining union rights; an industrial relations system for profit making, more legal power for already dominant employers and more exploitation.It is difficult to describe the Workplace Relations Bills already halted by the Senate as other than truth overboard. The spin doctor deliberately distorts reality by inverting the outcomes. Orwellian "softly, softly", "more jobs, better pay" through "flexibility and productivity" is the mantra endlessly repeated by Howard.

I urge activists to go behind the perverse political rhetoric. Become involved in exposing and campaigning against the Howard assault on our workplaces.

In Australian Options, Spring 2004 I analysed Howard’s attempt to extinguish the right to strike. This was one anti-worker Bill halted by the Senate, to now become law. I discuss others coming in 2005.

Howard’s thrust is to make much union conduct unlawful. Legitimate union organising and bargaining for the occupational, economic and social interests of workers will increasingly be unlawful. Any union that does anything unlawful will face heavy sanctions; a more reactionary penal system. Pattern or industry bargaining will be made unlawful, the only OECD country to do so.

Howard makes political noise about intervention by third parties, citing unions and the Industrial Relations umpire, but the reality will be that the third party intervening unnecessarily into the workplace is the Government.

The working poor will become poorer. The 2004 Senate Poverty Inquiry highlighted the new phenomenon of the working poor. Many poor households are in work but on very low pay. "Driving this change has been a casualisation of the workforce in the last two decades and a more recent weakening of the industrial relations systems". Workers in precarious jobs will be worse off.

Today’s Workplace Relations Act (1996) is biased, ensuring employer power and unfairly restricting workers’ and union rights, and enshrining Australian Workplace Agreements, individual contracts. That this system is pro-employer will not stop Howard’s industrial relations agenda with more unfair limitations on union bargaining that do not meet even minimum International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards.

The Howard government makes no secret of its closeness to powerful corporations and employer associations. politics,.

Removing the unfair dismissal law

Symbolically, as an icon issue is the removal of unfair dismissal rights of workers in small business with less than 20. The Senate for good reason voted it down ten times. A point of obsession for Howard who repeats doctrines continuously on TV to give the impression he supports small business: "It’s all the fault of unfair dismissal." After this law gets through, millions of small business workers could be sacked unfairly, harshly, or for no reason. This is a green light for employers to mistreat their workforce and for some bosses ruling with workplace fear. If staffs speak up, they can be sacked with no warning. This is a recipe for unsafe workplaces, for the bullying of women. Unfair dismissal rights give the employee a way to air their grievance and if the case is strong to be reinstated or compensated. It is reprehensible that this individual right is to be abolished.

Dismissal laws only prohibit unfair behaviour. They are not a major burden on small business as less than 0.3% has a federal unfair dismissal claim in an average year and less than 1% gives unfair dismissal laws as a reason for not hiring staff. In spin language, unfairly sacking a worker is said to increase jobs, when it is the opposite.

Howard also proposes to deny employees in small business redundancy pay.

The attack on the award system

Howard’s award stripping process was bad enough reducing awards to 20 minimums. There is a real danger that award minimum conditions and Safety Net increases that millions of low paid workers rely on will be either further reduced, or worse, abolished. Taking away existing workplace rights for millions of award dependent working families is not justified. This will make the working poor run faster, work harder and longer in a race to the bottom competing against East Asia and China. Predictably, the International Monetary Fund adds pressure by asserting the abolition of awards would create jobs, whereas the research and international experience shows the opposite.

Individual contract bargaining

Another iconic issue is compelling management to use, Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs). These are just individual contracts that set working conditions below the minimum award. After eight years of vigorous promotion, AWAs cover less than 3% of the workforce. Individual bargaining was the system 100 years ago under the slogan of "freedom of contract". Employers refused any collective union bargaining but enforced an individual contract, "sign up or else you won’t get the job". Today, giant mining corporations use AWAs to deunionise workplaces, and small business to exploit their workforce. The University sector is one target of compulsory AWAs. With good campaigning and the 2003 National Universities stoppage, Education Minister Nelson’s compulsory AWAs were defeated. Universities and the NTEU instead chose enterprise bargaining agreements. $12 million to push AWAs will go to the discredited Office of the Employment Advocate.

Non-union agreement making has not had much take up, less than 2% of Federal employees, but Howard promises more. The enterprise union’s provision has been little used, so this will be pushed.

The future of the Industrial Commission

Will the Industrial Relations Commission system continue to exist? Not as we have known it over the last 100 years. Howard now has an enterprise and individual bargaining with conciliation system (but not arbitration), so what is to come is not clear. In a perverse, yet ideological twist, many functions may be privatised! Howard opposes the AIRC adjudicating on intractable disputes, but rather is to increase sanctions against unions. High Court Justice Kirby describes those undermining our IR system as "industrial ayatollahs". Professor Hancock has dispelled myths about the AIRC holding back economic productivity. The election promise was for small business mediation, committing $2 million.

Howard wants to take over the state industrial relations systems on his terms. The spin is to have "one simple harmonised system" – sounds logical but which means little protection for vulnerable workers covered by each state’s industrial relations legislation relying on award protections to get a fair go. State systems are user friendly, low cost and do not impose rigidity on small businesses. Howard may start with a hostile takeover of state unfair dismissal systems.

The agenda is full deregulation of the labour market, "flexibility". But this means downward flexibility in wages and conditions. Businesses get the right to bargain collectively with purchasers of their products, but not workers the right to bargain collectively with purchasers of their labour. While product markets affect people, labour markets are people. Labour is not a commodity. Total deregulation of the labour market would have horrendous consequences for vulnerable employees without power to negotiate decent wages in a market economy. In reality, there will be increased government regulation but against workers.

The Orwellian "Protecting the Low Paid" Bill makes it difficult for the AIRC to grant safety net wage rises to the working poor. Every year Howard opposes the ACTU’s national Living Wage rise. For 2005, it is to lift the minimum to $13 per hour [www.actu.asn.au]. But beware that Howard can go further and not have a minimum wage at all. He has embraced an Access Economics report on labour market deregulation that says cut the minimum wage to as little as $7.30 an hour. Obscene incomes for corporate executives continue.

Howard promises to protect independent contractors. How is unclear. He wants to ensure that "the concept of freedom to contract is protected, promoted and enhanced." This is freedom only for the employer to contract on whatever terms the employer wants, the free market. It is the same line pushed over 100 years ago in the 1890s. In today’s difficult labour market, far too many employers used legal contracting devices to force workers to sign that they are not employees (and not entitled to basic minimum entitlements, health and safety and workers’ compensation). Workers have to sign documents to become "businesses" and then contract their labour.

The attack on the unions

Howard is obsessed with frustrating right of entry, a basic right of union organising. Prescriptive conditions on union officials will be introduced.

But Howard wants to go after militant and political unions. He politically targets the building and construction unions. Options, no 36 Autumn 2004, reviewed the biased $60 million Cole Commission against building unionists. Howard will establish a Building Industry police force, with another $60 million with more draconian powers; with a world of industrial spies, taping and harassing building workers, delegates, union officials, fabricating evidence, and prosecuting; so, we will have an industrial police state. Most strikes would become unlawful, removing collective bargaining power. Union officials would lose their livelihoods for five years for the most trivial breaches.

Building unions will campaign and stop work to protest. Workers assert their political right to strike to defend their social and economic interests against these reactionary laws. There are justifications for the democratic right to protest, of freedom of political expression and to oppose being treated as a wage slave to employer or government policy. The right to strike is justified by the International Labour Organisation.

Compulsory pre-strike ballots are on the agenda. Many unions conduct a pre-strike ballot. But Howard’s provisions will be so restrictive, unpractical and delaying any union campaign momentum that they in practice will frustrate industrial action. If any balloting provision is breached, however minor, then the strike becomes unprotected and unlawful. Employers then have sanctions under the Workplace Relations Act or at common law, where ancient torts make strikes unlawful as such.

The common law tort weapon for an employer to use the injunction from a Supreme Court judge to stop strikes or else the union faces most severe penalties will be more readily available. The limited immunity to delay common law tort action will be removed.

Secondary boycott laws that already make solidarity strikes unlawful under the Trade Practices Act will be strengthened. All of these policies breach Australia’s international labour law obligations. But Howard is arrogant and ignores UN human rights and ILO standards, whilst backing free-market corporate globalisation.

Health and safety in danger

Howard will abolish the tripartite National Occupational Health and Safety Commission that sets the standards for the workplace health and safety guidelines. Each year there are 4,500 workplace-related deaths. Unions are vital in exposing and enforcing occupational health and safety: the ACTU campaign with asbestos victims against James Hardie.

Fight-back

Howard has power to pass these policies, despite union and community opposition. Some unions are well organised to resist. Labour history has seen campaigns to defeat penal powers. Other unions will at least survive. The ACTU’s organising strategy will be tested. One challenge is to build solidarity across unions and network members and to strengthen community alliances. Not necessarily easy, but remember the waterfront worker and community mobilisation. Such a fight-back will determine whether we revive or extinguish that great Australian notion of a fair go for all.