Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Industrial Relations "Reform"?
IR plan needs time for debate
JustinB
Monday, 10 October 2005
JOHN HOWARD is perfectly right in seeing the industrial relations revolution he is promoting in the centre of his personal and political achievements. He has played a major role, from his earliest time in politics, in promoting the need to loosen up the labour market and to dismantle an all too comfortable system based on federal and state awards, the conciliation and arbitration system, a host of sacred cows reaching deep into Australian history, and what has been described as the industrial relations club. Some of the changes he advocated - like other wider economic changes - were actually achieved under the Hawke and Keating governments before 1996, but these, though brave, were limited by Labor's fundamental links with the organised trade union movement. It has been the Howard Government which became the engine room for further change, even if, in its first three terms, it was severely limited by not having a Senate majority. Now it has, at least on paper, and massive change is on the way.
So massive, indeed, that people will need some time to digest them before settling on their views. The details may prove to be critically important. While the Prime Minister is perfectly right in saying that the broad economic and political arguments about the changes have been canvassed extensively for more than a decade, and that the broad framework of the legislation announced yesterday was outlined several months ago, it is still quite noticeable that no draft legislation is yet available. In fact, after the framework announcement, the industrial wing of Labor launched a strong campaign against the changes, which was far more effective than the Government had expected. This had two results. First a massive public relations campaign, of dubious legality and political morality, to promote the political case for change, the more improper because not only was the legislation not even on the books, it was not even before the parliament. Second, a more tactical response involved determining (probably at public expense) just where the union campaign was making hits, and making adjustments to the policies so as to neutralise them. Yesterday's announcement, indeed, is to be regarded as more a stage in a marketing campaign - designed to allay particular fears about loss of treasured award conditions - than it is to be regarded as a part of the process of putting the changes into law and practice.
The need for detail is the stronger given that most of the states have announced that they will challenge the legislation in the courts. The Constitution does not put industrial relations under Commonwealth control - indeed, so far as it puts some under it, it is by authorising the creation of a conciliation and arbitration framework which, though perhaps remaining in an emasculated form, can no longer be said to be the centrepiece of the Commonwealth system. It is only from that centrepiece that the Commonwealth acquires a power, incidentally as it were, to register and regulate trade unions (and employer groups) and their activities, or behaviour by individuals in the workplace. The states (if not the territories) have, in any event, residual powers, apart from Victoria, which has ceded them to the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth's response to this is believed to rely primarily on other constitutional powers, not least over corporations (a definition which would embrace most employers) and over trade and commerce. It can argue with some force that Australia, in the 21st century, is now a single economy, and that a national, rather than a state-by-state approach, is needed for such matters. That might well accord with the mainstream judicial thinking of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; just how much it accords with the thinking of a conservative, timid, technically minded and jurisdictionally-focused court remains to be seen. That a majority of the judges might be expected to be reflexively hostile to trade unions, or sympathetic to the Government's open market aspirations, may be neither here nor there; any case will inevitably also stir some states-rights passions, as manifested by the hostility to the changes shown by some state conservative politicians.
But much more is wanted than this - much more indeed than is presently on the table. The Government has two fundamental public relations problems. One is the fear that the changes will break down hard-won working conditions and perks of employment. The second is the fear that a basic principle behind the desire to create greater flexibility with wages and conditions - of an essential bargaining equality between employer and employee - is simply not true, or not true of many workplaces. In both cases, the benefits of flexibilities - not least of adapting conditions to one's own needs and to the needs of a particular workplace, including trading some rights for others or for money - may be well appreciated. But the fear, that they will be coerced into choice, perhaps particularly so if they are bargaining one by one, will remain. Promises announced yesterday about entrenching the status quo for existing workers are intended to deal with this, but a clever campaign may well demonstrate significant limits to this promise, as well as, perhaps, a bargaining disadvantage existing workers may acquire as against fresh workers unless they "voluntarily" give up what cannot be taken away.
The Prime Minister has declared that he wants the legislation passed by Christmas. Increasingly that suggests a truncated debate in parliament on some of the most important legislation in John Howard's time
JustinB
Monday, 10 October 2005
JOHN HOWARD is perfectly right in seeing the industrial relations revolution he is promoting in the centre of his personal and political achievements. He has played a major role, from his earliest time in politics, in promoting the need to loosen up the labour market and to dismantle an all too comfortable system based on federal and state awards, the conciliation and arbitration system, a host of sacred cows reaching deep into Australian history, and what has been described as the industrial relations club. Some of the changes he advocated - like other wider economic changes - were actually achieved under the Hawke and Keating governments before 1996, but these, though brave, were limited by Labor's fundamental links with the organised trade union movement. It has been the Howard Government which became the engine room for further change, even if, in its first three terms, it was severely limited by not having a Senate majority. Now it has, at least on paper, and massive change is on the way.
So massive, indeed, that people will need some time to digest them before settling on their views. The details may prove to be critically important. While the Prime Minister is perfectly right in saying that the broad economic and political arguments about the changes have been canvassed extensively for more than a decade, and that the broad framework of the legislation announced yesterday was outlined several months ago, it is still quite noticeable that no draft legislation is yet available. In fact, after the framework announcement, the industrial wing of Labor launched a strong campaign against the changes, which was far more effective than the Government had expected. This had two results. First a massive public relations campaign, of dubious legality and political morality, to promote the political case for change, the more improper because not only was the legislation not even on the books, it was not even before the parliament. Second, a more tactical response involved determining (probably at public expense) just where the union campaign was making hits, and making adjustments to the policies so as to neutralise them. Yesterday's announcement, indeed, is to be regarded as more a stage in a marketing campaign - designed to allay particular fears about loss of treasured award conditions - than it is to be regarded as a part of the process of putting the changes into law and practice.
The need for detail is the stronger given that most of the states have announced that they will challenge the legislation in the courts. The Constitution does not put industrial relations under Commonwealth control - indeed, so far as it puts some under it, it is by authorising the creation of a conciliation and arbitration framework which, though perhaps remaining in an emasculated form, can no longer be said to be the centrepiece of the Commonwealth system. It is only from that centrepiece that the Commonwealth acquires a power, incidentally as it were, to register and regulate trade unions (and employer groups) and their activities, or behaviour by individuals in the workplace. The states (if not the territories) have, in any event, residual powers, apart from Victoria, which has ceded them to the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth's response to this is believed to rely primarily on other constitutional powers, not least over corporations (a definition which would embrace most employers) and over trade and commerce. It can argue with some force that Australia, in the 21st century, is now a single economy, and that a national, rather than a state-by-state approach, is needed for such matters. That might well accord with the mainstream judicial thinking of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; just how much it accords with the thinking of a conservative, timid, technically minded and jurisdictionally-focused court remains to be seen. That a majority of the judges might be expected to be reflexively hostile to trade unions, or sympathetic to the Government's open market aspirations, may be neither here nor there; any case will inevitably also stir some states-rights passions, as manifested by the hostility to the changes shown by some state conservative politicians.
But much more is wanted than this - much more indeed than is presently on the table. The Government has two fundamental public relations problems. One is the fear that the changes will break down hard-won working conditions and perks of employment. The second is the fear that a basic principle behind the desire to create greater flexibility with wages and conditions - of an essential bargaining equality between employer and employee - is simply not true, or not true of many workplaces. In both cases, the benefits of flexibilities - not least of adapting conditions to one's own needs and to the needs of a particular workplace, including trading some rights for others or for money - may be well appreciated. But the fear, that they will be coerced into choice, perhaps particularly so if they are bargaining one by one, will remain. Promises announced yesterday about entrenching the status quo for existing workers are intended to deal with this, but a clever campaign may well demonstrate significant limits to this promise, as well as, perhaps, a bargaining disadvantage existing workers may acquire as against fresh workers unless they "voluntarily" give up what cannot be taken away.
The Prime Minister has declared that he wants the legislation passed by Christmas. Increasingly that suggests a truncated debate in parliament on some of the most important legislation in John Howard's time
