Spin Can't Hide Attack on Families

The following opinion piece by AWU National Secretary Bill Shorten was published in The Australian on October 10, 2005.

The advertising and marketing launch by the Howard Government yesterday has revealed, at last, the fundamental changes that will be forced onto millions of Australian workers and their families.

Penalty rates, four weeks' annual leave, overtime, shift and overtime allowances, meal breaks, bonuses, allowances - the basics that many Australian working families have relied on - are now up for grabs.

Make no mistake: the Government's advertising campaign may try to spin this, but the changes are very radical and will reach into most Australian families in a very personal way, attacking their wages and working lives.

The promotion of the individual contract over other forms of setting wages and conditions will have a long lasting and devastating impact on the Australian way of life and work.

Little has changed from what the Howard Government revealed months ago about their proposed changes.

The promised new protections from Howard's new world amounts to little more than delaying its start-up up through transitional provisions, together with some patronising gestures such as allowing parents to counter-sign the contracts of children younger than 18.

Apparently the Government caved in on this issue after unions presented case after case of exploitation of teenage workers on unfair contracts to the current Senate committee inquiry into workplace agreements.

The promise of a new employer education campaign to be run by the Office of the Employment Advocate is ironic considering the same office processed many of the same individual contracts that cut pay or conditions.

The revamping of the Office of Workplace Services to pick up from the Employment Advocate's failure in enforcing fair agreements is another empty gesture.

If the Government was serious about enforcing legal standards in agreement making, it would not be removing this authority from the tested and trusted umpire of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.

In all, yesterday's document signals that the legislation will be a dog's breakfast of legal complexity and confusion that will be a feature of expensive and uncertain court cases for years to come.

For workers, the Government is offering more of the same false promise of "choice" in workplaces where employees' individual bargaining power is negligible measured against the influence of their corporate employers.

Apart from a few empty assertions, there is no explanation in the document about how any of the new measures will improve productivity.

That's probably because all the academic and econometric research suggests that collective agreement making - especially that involving well-organised unions - is associated with higher productivity growth than individual contracts.

The Government refuses to enter into this serious economic debate about productivity. By exerting downward pressure on incomes - particularly at the lower end of the labour market - the changes will simply shift more money to profits rather than wages.

The document released yesterday reveals the Government's real agenda - that is to weaken the union movement. Further prohibitions and tougher penalties are planned in relation to union activity, including the completely unworkable requirement of formal secret ballots for industrial action.

The document is full of signs of anti-employee bias.

No amount of political lipstick the Government applies can hide the facts about its industrial changes.

They are unfair for workers and are designed to cut wages in favour of profits. They will be bad for families and our community life. And they will do nothing to improve the productivity needed for economic growth.