Fair play at Lord's, fair play at work: Australian industrial relations

Sharan Burrow

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) - President

Fair play at Lords, fair play at work

The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, is in London today for the first Ashes test. Working people who believe in fair play will of course be rooting for the best team to win, and global workers’ solidarity prevents me at this moment from offering an opinion about who that team is.

The Prime Minister of Australia, however, is not someone who believes in fair play. Certainly not for working people, at any rate.

Back home in Australia, John Howard is preparing to play dirty once again, this time with workers’ rights.

He claims that industrial relations is the most pressing economic issue facing the nation. He argues that the changes he has in mind will create more jobs, lift productivity and boost wages.

A more honest assessment of his plans would describe them as an ideological fetish, and John Howard admitted as much when he said they were 'an article of faith' for the coalition he leads.

Australia is currently in its fourteenth consecutive year of economic growth - a historically significant period of economic expansion, low inflation, productivity growth and low unemployment. Industrial disputes are at record lows. Decentralised collective workplace bargaining, underpinned by the national wage setting process we call ‘awards’, has unleashed enormous productive potential.

The industrial relations system is not holding the economy back. In fact it is part of our success. There are far more important economic priorities - like addressing Australia’s skills shortage, decline in research and development, lack of infrastructure planning and flagging trade performance (our trade in merchandise exports with the UK, for example, has declined significantly in recent years).

The Government’s workplace agenda does not address real economic priorities. It is a plan to deliver power to business and diminish the rights of every Australian employee.

John Howard wants to remove unfair dismissal protection for those in businesses with 100 or less staff - 99% of Australian companies.

He is also proposing to take away the right of trade unions to bargain over most terms and conditions at work.

Currently workplace agreements can’t be used to reduce pay or employment conditions below the ‘award’ safety net. The Government plans to scrap this requirement and instead rely on just five minimum conditions: a minimum wage; annual leave (two weeks of which may be ‘voluntarily’ given up), sick leave, hours of work, and unpaid parental leave.

Employers will be able to use individual contracts to remove employment rights like redundancy pay, overtime and shift work rates, weekend and public holiday pay rates without compensation. That will hit the weakest in their pay packets.

Therefore the greatest threat to take-home pay will be individual contracts - what the Government innocently calls Australian Workplace Agreements. The inherent problem with these ‘Agreements’ is that individual employees don’t have equal bargaining power with their employer. That is why collective bargaining is an internationally recognised right, providing a balance of power in the workplace and ensuring fair treatment.

Where workers want to keep collective bargaining, it will be lawful for employers not only to refuse but also to provide benefits only to those who sign these ‘Agreements’ - a clear breach of international labour rights, and something the Tories in Britain also tried to do.

In the UK, employees have an enforceable democratic right to collectively bargain - if a majority of employees vote for union recognition or collective bargaining, their employer must negotiate in good faith. In Australia, workers will be denied this right.

Meanwhile, minimum wages will fall in real value. The Government plans to emasculate our independent industrial tribunal (AIRC) and set up the deceitfully titled Fair Pay Commission. John Howard says this is copying the British Low Pay Commission, but that body first created and subsequently raised the minimum wage. It is our view that John Howard’s version will cut the minimum wage and would have already had it cut by about £25 a week if they had had their way.

These industrial relations changes are profoundly biased towards business. The Government says that business can be trusted to do the right thing, despite corporate scandals in Australia and all over the world.

But workers’ rights are not charity to be granted at the discretion of business - they must be enforceable legal rights.

But isn’t this just a matter for Australians? Why should the British care what happens off the cricket pitch this week?

It matters to all of us because what John Howard is trying to do is to slash the rights of Australian workers so he can compete unfairly with the rest of the developed world. He is promoting a race to the bottom by trying to turn Australia into a low wage economy.

To do it he will be breaking global labour standards established by the tripartite International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Workers everywhere suffer when wages are attacked and I am delighted that the British TUC will today be delivering a letter to John Howard in support of workplace rights in Australia. John Howard upholding workers rights: now that would be a victory for Australia that people on both sides of the world could applaud!