Solidarity

After being fairly quiet lately, I thought I had better make an effort to put up an election eve post to sum up the campaigns and tell you how I recommend you vote tomorrow.

In truth, IR did not feature very much in the campaign. The parties’ positions have had a lot of publicity over the last couple of years, and voters who considered workers’ rights to be the key issue already knew where their vote would be headed. But it did pop up a few times.

Union-hater embarrasses Liberals

The most entertaining campaign incident was the Lindsay pamphlet scam, in which a Labor sting operation caught senior Liberals stirring up race hatred by distributing false junk mail. What does this have to do with IR? Well, outgoing MP Jackie Kelly defended her husband’s actions by saying, “He hates the unions with a passion, my husband.” We know, Jackie — so much so that he gets violent. Today’s Financial Review reminds us that

Kelly’s husband, Gary Clark, came under fire last year for assaulting a union official and breaking his video camera…

It’s nice to see him get his comeuppance, and I hope the AFP prosecutes him for his latest offence.

Court keeps Howard’s IR plot secret

This weblog has been documenting the growing evidence that the Howard Government secretly plans to take its IR laws even further. As Labor points out, a Costello Government would make WorkChoices II a certainty. And there are other IR extremists running for the Liberals who would no doubt push for further changes — like Bob Day, who is one of the brains behind the sham Independent Contractors of Australia and believes the “no-man’s land between zero dollars and the minimum wage” should be abolished.

Remember the Government document called “The Regulation of Workplace Relations current, proposed and future”? The one that was released with the “future” section blacked out? Well, several media organisations started investigating those future plans with a Freedom of Information request for similar documents. They were blocked by a “conclusive certificate” on the grounds that the public has no right to know what the Government’s future IR plans are. Kevin Rudd has pledged to abolish conclusive certificates.

Labor pushes unions away

My last post noted Bob Hawke’s suggestion that Rudd would speak out in favour of the union movement. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Sure, he reminded us that it was the unions who took up the fight against James Hardie on behalf of its former employees, but he’s been doing a lot more to keep them away. He booted Joe McDonald from the ALP for the heinous offence of saying John Howard was on his way out. He says the unions will not be rewarded for their success in turning public opinion against WorkChoices, or for their teams of campaign workers in marginal seats.

In that last post, I said that if Rudd didn’t come out in support of the labour movement, “he can expect more voters to follow the Fireys and turn Green.” I was right:

Dean Mighell’s Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and several others have donated money to the Greens and advocated voting Green in the Senate.

But the Medical Scientists Association of Victoria has gone a step further in telling its members – pathologists, medical scientists and psychologists – to vote No1 for the Greens in all lower-house seats.

And the polls reflect people’s shift: “The pollster [Newspoll] also has the Greens on seven, an almost doubling over the campaign… The increase has come at the expense of Labor”.

So, how should you vote?

Well, unlike most of the major newspapers I’m not going to encourage you to vote Labor. No, I’m going to go with the Fireys and the MSAV and advocate a vote for the Greens. In the lower house, vote:

1. Greens
2. Labor
3. The rest

In the Senate, vote:

1. Greens (above the line)

This is the surest way to get rid of WorkChoices, to send a clear message to the ALP that it must support the union movement, and to make sure that if Labor does not have a majority in the Senate (as it likely will not) it can negotiate with the Greens instead of Barnaby Joyce and Family First.

Tomorrow night should be fun.

The Government has pinned its hopes on industrial relations, and especially the union movement’s influence on Labor. But it was caught lying about some ALP members, and pretending that student politics counts as industrial unionism.

Besides, voters know that the Liberal frontbenches are stuffed full of business lawyers, while union leaders bring a range of skills to the Parliament. In the Financial Review on Wednesday, Steven Scott reported (p14):

He has degrees in mining engineering and economics, had a board seat at a $26 billion super fund and recently negotiated the largest personal injury settlement in Australian legal history.

More than 80 employees worked for his oprganisation which had a turnover of about $10 million and he was the top executive for much longer than most chief executives run large listed companies.

Greg Combet may be public enemy No.1 in the federal government’s campaign against Labor’s union dominated front bench but he has a CV that in some ways could be mistaken for a company executive, raising questions about what skills former union leaders bring to politics.

John Howard even claimed his 90-minute debate flop was worthwhile because it gave him a chance to repeat a ten-second anti-union soundbite. Unfortunately for him, “[t]he Worm appeared to be particularly critical of Mr Howard when industrial relations was discussed”, and went through the roof when Kevin Rudd talked about workplace fairness.

The most recent opinion poll has Labor gaining major ground on the economy, which shows the public is not falling for the “unions are anti-business” scare campaign. And maybe voters want someone to stick up for ordinary workers, anyway. Crikey recently reported that the Australian Election Survey has shown decreasing fears about unions (15.5% in 2004) and increasing fears about business power (27.1%).

The construction industry scare campaign is unravelling, too. The managing director of John Holland, one of the nation’s biggest construction companies, admitted, “Whoever wins, we don’t factor that sort of stuff in. I don’t think the world’s going to end, I don’t think the sky’s going to fall in.” Meanwhile, the Government launched a new YouTube ad about Joe McDonald — on the same day a court vindicated the CFMEU official’s entry onto a construction site to chase unpaid wages and investigate safety concerns.

Of course, the Government will continue to put heat on Kevin Rudd over Labor’s union support, including Joe McDonald’s membership. Yesterday, Bob Hawke said what Rudd should be saying:

Mr Howard’s attack on the unions was “the most disastrously unfair and baseless accusation and propaganda that has ever been used by any leader in the history of Australian politics. I say that deliberately, that’s not exaggeration,” he said.

“Every single Australian is indebted to the Australian trade union movement. How dare this man attack the trade union movement. There is no institution in Australia which has done more to flesh out the concept of a fair go, to give it reality, than the Australian trade union movement.”

Hawke has hinted that Kevin Rudd will “soon speak out” along similar lines. If he doesn’t, he can expect more voters to follow the Fireys and turn Green.

The Government’s reds-under-the-bed fear campaign has been kicked up a notch, with Peter Costello accusing Julia Gillard of being a closet Communist. And isn’t it awful that Labor’s candidates come from a tradition of representing Australian workers and their families?

Seriously, if the ALP was in the pockets of the unions, wouldn’t the ACTU guarantee support for Labor’s Senate campaign? Instead, the union movement is verging on support for the Greens, with a generic anti-Government Senate how-to-vote card and support for Greens candidates from individual unions. It is true that the Greens’ IR policy is more consistently pro-worker, and electing Greens candidates to the Senate would help prevent Labor being pressured into cutting deals with the likes of Family First or the Democrats.

The main thing is to ensure that Howard’s Government is not reelected — not only because that would entrench WorkChoices, but also because they have bigger plans. Last year a senior minister, Nick Minchin, revealed there was “still a long way to go” towards abolishing awards and the AIRC. Labor uncovered a secret treasury document called “The Regulation of Workplace Relations current, proposed and future” — the “proposed” section was WorkChoices, and the “future” section was blacked out. And now Joe Hockey has promised that the role of unions in Australia is “essentially over”.

That’s what he thinks.

Update: …and here’s why he’s wrong. Asbestos victim Bernie Banton is angry about Joe Hockey’s attitude:

“Where was Joe Hockey when we were fighting against James Hardie, he was nowhere to be seen?” he said.

“Without their [the union's] support and their absolute total commitment to getting that deal done, we would not have a deal for all those thousands of future victims.”

“We haven’t got the conditions we’ve got today because some nice boss came along and said ‘we like the look of you’.

“We’ve got it through absolutely hard yakka by the union movement and they have stressed all along that that’s what they’re there for.”

The election has been called for Saturday, 24 November. That means the clock is ticking on your electoral enrolment.

The deadline for new enrolments is this Wednesday, 17 October, at 8:00pm, so there isn’t much time.

Don’t assume you are correctly enrolled. Visit the AEC’s Check Your Details page to make absolutely sure you have the chance to vote for workplace rights.

Please make sure you talk to your friends and colleagues about the need to update their enrolment details. We can’t leave anything to chance.

“Are you now or have you ever been…?” was the joking title of a recent post at Larvatus Prodeo. It was responding to a despicable Government/Gazette tag-team attack on academics whose research found that WorkChoices and AWAs were slashing wages.

Because there was no basis for attacking the merits of the findings, the research team was criticised for its personal support for unionism. It doesn’t matter that the research was peer-reviewed and partly funded by the Government’s Australian Research Council, or that the academics involved regularly do work for business groups, government, or institutions including the Reserve Bank — there’s reds under the bed.

But when Mercurious put up his post, he couldn’t have known how accurate the headline was. Another report, released yesterday, suggests that WorkChoices has emboldened bosses to sack pregnant women. An hour before it was due to be released, RMIT’s Dr Sara Charlesworth received a phone call from DEWR:

Dr Charlesworth said the officer asked her about the contents of the report before saying, “I have to ask you, have you been a union official? Are you now or have you been a union official?”

“I laughed because I thought it was such an outrageous question,” Dr Charlesworth said. “She said, ‘I know, I’m really sorry, but have you?’.”

The Government has decided that since it win the ball, it will play the man instead. The academics involved, on the other hand, are quite happy to debate their findings. Dr Brigid can Wanrooy put up a guest post at Blogocracy today, and has been answering questions in the comments thread.

When Joe Hockey manages to mumble something about ABS statistics, he gets it dead wrong. First, the ABS said it hasn’t done any analysis of post-WorkChoices AWAs; and second, independent analysis of the existing data disagrees with Hockey’s version:

Professor Alison Preston, from Curtin Business School, says the same bureau data actually supports the findings of the University of Sydney study that low-skilled workers on AWAs earn significantly less on average than those covered by collective agreements. “[Mr] Hockey has recently dismissed data released by the Workplace Research Centre at Sydney University showing that low-skilled workers on collective agreements earned roughly $100 more per week than low-skilled workers on AWAs,” she said.

“The wage gaps uncovered by the Sydney University researchers would be on a par with average wage gaps estimated using official ABS data.”

Professor Preston’s analysis of detailed figures collected in May last year, but not published by the bureau, showed non-managerial workers on federal AWAs earned $76 a week less than their counterparts on collective agreements. For women on AWAs the weekly earnings disadvantage compared with those on collective agreements was around $110.

Of course, if the Government was really serious about ensuring proper academic study of WorkChoices, it wouldn’t be doing everything possible to cover up the raw information. The Workplace Authority’s Barbara Bennett has been flat out lying about the privacy issues involved with releasing information to academics. In the past, the information has been released with personal details blacked out, but that’s all too hard for our new post-WorkChoices regulators:

Ms Bennett defended her decision, saying all AWAs were now lodged electronically, making it more difficult to mask who the parties were.

Asked if the authority should simply print out the agreements and use a black marker to obscure names and addresses, she said, “It isn’t a conspiracy.”

Incompetence, then.

Normal service will return soon. I hope.

In the meantime, check out The Manic Times. Thanks to its ongoing IR coverage, it’s not welcome at the HR Nicholls Society — and I can’t think of a better endorsement.

I’m putting together a post on Labor’s IR backdown, but I’m snowed under at work right now so I’m not really in the mood to finish writing it just yet. In the meantime, here’s some video and music you might find interesting.

Kath & Kim: “Bloody Howard”

You’ve surely heard that this week’s episode of Kath & Kim took a shot at WorkChoices and “bloody Howard”. Sophie Black sees it as “proof” that “John Howard’s battlers are deserting him”, and with the polls running the way they have been lately, it’s hard to argue.

Continue reading…

As Michael Bachelard pointed out in The Age recently, the ABCC was ostensibly set up to deal with organised crime in the building industry — yet “almost two years after the ABCC was set up as a statutory commission, not one alleged organised criminal has been charged.” Instead, it uses its extraordinary powers to persecute workers and union officials who dare to stand up to management.

The most recent ABCC prosecution is trumpeted in a press release (pdf). A CFMEU organiser, Adrian McLoughlin, had his entry permit revoked for 2 months — a lot shorter than the 18 months demanded by the ABCC — for some minor, technical breaches of the legislation. But the decision was more interesting because it slammed some of the dodgy tactics used by the ABCC in its union-busting crusade.

Continue reading…

An employer in the film industry has admitted paying his staff illegal, below-award wages, and has been caught on tape making threats of violence against a union official. Film producer Brad Diebert rang the MEAA’s Simon Whipp:

How dare you say we have the money to pay actors more money… fuck you, spreading shit like that. … You and me see each other in the street you better walk the other way, fucker, ’cause I’m going to rip your fucking eyes out.

[audio:http://www.alliance.org.au/images/stories/audio/diebert.mp3]

Which reminds me — whatever happened to Liberal councillor Jim Aitken? John Howard said “his position is now being examined”, but that was a while ago. Has that convicted criminal been expelled from the Liberal Party yet, or is John Howard soft on workplace thuggery?

Take a look at this breathless reporting from Brad Norington in the Government Gazette:

Businesses are using John Howard’s workplace laws to strike a better balance between work and family life, with a dramatic increase in time off allowed so employees can look after sick children or elderly relatives.

Almost 40 per cent of employers surveyed in the most detailed study since the Howard Government introduced Work Choices last year say they have increased the number of “personal carer days” available.

This is misleading. Prior to WorkChoices, workers were entitled to 10 days sick leave. Now, workers are entitled to 10 days personal or carer’s leave — which includes sick leave. In other words, you can now use your sick leave to look after your sick kids (which is a good thing), but the survey doesn’t say whether businesses are going above the bare legal minimum.

And given Norington’s lede is about “strik[ing] a better balance between work and family life”, perhaps it would have been worth reporting what HR practitioners said when they were directly asked about it? From the report (pdf):

62. ‘Operating under Work Choices will improve work-family balance within the organisation over the next three years’ (n = 934):

	Percentage
Strongly agree	5.3
Agree	13.9
Neither agree nor disagree	44.4
Disagree	23.6
Strongly disagree	12.9

Total in agreement: 19.1%. Total who disagree: 36.5%.

Even though the president of the Australian Human Resources Institute told the media “[t]here is some concern looking forward as to whether WorkChoices will be consistent with better work-life balance in the future,” it doesn’t fit The Australian‘s pro-Government agenda, so it’s got to be left out.

Elsewhere: Tim Dunlop has lots more on the survey.