Alex White » Industrial Relations

Significant IR changes possible through regulations, other Acts

Alex — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:26:59 +0000

Tony Abbott said that he won’t change the Workplace Relations Act in his first term of government, and Eric Abetz says the only “tweaks” will be to regulations.

Image: Tandberg, The Age, 2005.

Significant changes to the industrial relations regime in Australia is possible through regulation changes, and to amendments to other Acts.

For example, the Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements (HEWRRs) were regulations imposed onto universities that affected their funding. The HEWRR regulations forced universities to offer AWAs to staff, exclude a wide range of things from collective agreements and more — all through regulations.

Similarly, Tony Abbott could significantly change the Corporations Act to remove workers rights, side stepping the Workplace Relations (Fair Work) Act. Other Acts could be changed as well to impose Tony Abbott’s extreme IR agenda.

An academic from NSW goes through some of the other possible ways for Tony Abbott to strip workers of their rights in an interview with Workplace Express:

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has promised not to amend the Fair Work Act if elected, but McCallum told Workplace Express that the power of incumbency itself should not be underestimated.

Federal governments, he said, “have powers to appoint people to FWA; they have powers to intervene in proceedings”. They had, he said, a special power under s431 (which had not yet been used) to terminate industrial action.

They also had a contracting power with private enterprise, “where they can lay down who they’d prefer to deal with”.

“People forget the powers of Government, powers to appoint to all sorts of boards, powers not to consult with the trade unions about anything. These are far more important powers than changing the regulations, and in fact when [former Prime Minister] John Howard came to power he shut out trade unions from everything, and that was far more devastating than minor amendments to the regulations.”

Changes to regulations also significantly impact on unions’ ability to collectively bargain. The list of non-allowable matters is contained in regulations. Non-allowable matters are those that are unlawful to be included in a collective agreement, such as bargaining fees or environmental matters.

Tony Abbott could easily add a great number of things to non-allowable matters, restricting the ability of workers to improve their pay or conditions.

Opposition IR Shadow Minister cut from Reith cloth

Alex — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:31:22 +0000

Workforce Daily has a few interesting takes on Eric Abetz’s elevation to the IR portfolio as part of the new Opposition Shadow Ministry. (No link unfortunately, as it’s an email newsletter).

Abbott:

Abbott praised Abetz for his “long-interest in employment issues and his record of standing up for the rights of employees and small business in the area of workplace relations”.

Michael Keenan (who was dumped in favour of Abetz):

Former WR Shadow Michael Keenan was dropped from the front benches to justice and customs. “I appreciate his work in this area particularly in the significant amendments he was able to deliver to the Rudd Govt’s recent Fair Work Act,” Abbott said.

Paul Howes (AWU National Secretary):

AWU nat sec Paul Howes issued a statement immediately after the appointment was announced. “I had hoped the new Liberal leader would at least try to cover his tracks in his desire to return Australia to Work choice style laws – but with Senator Eric Abetz we now know that we will have all out engagement from here to the next Federal election,” Howes said.

More from the ACTU Media Release (no link yet):

Ms Burrow said the appointment of hardliner Eric Abetz to the Shadow Workplace portfolio is another sign that the Tony Abbott-led Liberals plan to bring back WorkChoices Mark II.

â€œSenator Abetz and Mr Abbott are industrial relations zealots.

â€œThere is no doubt they want to bring back WorkChoices.

â€œSenator Abetz was intimately involved with the Coalitionâ€™s $121 million promotion of WorkChoices and wrote the notoriously deceptive â€˜Protected By Lawâ€™ WorkChoices booklet.

Blog Action Day

Alex — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:25:10 +0000

Today (15 October) is Blog Action Day – a day when bloggers from around the world commit to promoting a single cause (climate change this year) and thus raise awareness of that cause.

Climate change is, simply, the greatest ethical, political and policy problem of our age.

Climate change is something that is close to my heart, and is a policy problem that I consider regularly, especially in my work and studies. I have written about climate change often on this blog. I have also been trained as part of The Climate Project to give Al Gore’s climate change presentation.

As a diabolical policy problem, climate change is a challenge which is easy for our political leaders to do very little. It is easy to “green wash”, or to take only some action to mitigate climate change. There is enormous efforts put in by polluters to muddy the debate about mitigating climate change, to create uncertainty, fear and doubt.

This post will be principally about what unions can do about climate change, and what they are already doing.

Unions are well placed to be global leaders in changing perceptions on climate change. In Australia, there is a lot of research which backs this up.

Australians by and large want there to be action on climate change (around 90%) and many are willing to personally do something about it – if they are convinced that what they are doing has an effect.
Australian union members by and large trust their union on workplace matters.

This means that if unions turn issues such as climate change into a workplace issue, then many of their members will be willing to take action.

The benefits are obvious. Firstly, unions can lead positive mitigation action on climate change through persuading workers to change their personal activities (turning off computers, car pooling to work, etc) and empowering workers into having employers change their policies and practices to be more sustainable (purchasing 100% renewable energy, only using recycled paper, carbon off-setting flights, retrofitting buildings to be energy and water efficient, etc).

Secondly, for unions there are many benefits. By turning members into climate change activists, the union increases its overall number of union activists. While a member may be inactive when it comes to negotiating a new collective agreement, that same member may be willing to stand up to an employer over the purchase of a fuel efficient car fleet. Once a member has been engaged, enabled and activated on one issue (climate change), it is far easier to make them active on a range of other issues (such as workplace rights, health and safety or collective bargaining).

Finally, unions need to be seen as leaders in the climate change debate. Not a debate over whether climate change is real. But rather how our society, community and economy can transition from carbon intensive to low-carbon (or zero carbon). It is union members who will bear the brunt of mitigation and adaptation policies. It is union members, in TAFEs and universities, who will train and retrain workers in carbon intensive industries, or a new generation workforce in clean energy jobs. Union members in ambulances and hospitals will deal with increasing numbers of climate change related illnesses (tropical diseases in temperate areas, heat stroke from unseasonally hot days). It is union members who will have to adapt our mass transit to cope with heat waves. The TUC in the United Kingdom has done some great work on the Just Transition concept in relation to climate change.

The role of unions on climate change is clear. Unions need to shape the future for their members, rather than wait around for changes to be made to them.

Thankfully, unions are responding. The ACTU and a number of unions (including my union) are running a climate change campaign, promoting clean energy jobs and working to engage thousands of unions members on climate change.

The personal action campaigns are a first step – by no means the last. I strongly believe that political action and political will is required to seriously address climate change (that is why I am a member of the ALP).

Nevertheless, personal action campaigns are important. The vast majority of Australians, although they want action on climate change, do not know what they personally can do to help. By engaging them at a personal level, unions can help lift them to a more politically aware level. We cannot expect union members to all be politically aware or active. Most Australians are not.

Running a personal action campaign not only builds union activists and helps make workplaces more sustainable, but also increases the political awareness and engagement of members.

LabourStart Photo Competition

Alex — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:28:44 +0000

For all you inspired unionists out there, I strongly encourage you to enter the LabourStart Photo Competition.

It’s a great initiative, and there are already some really good photos that have been submitted.

This year I entered the photo you see here.

It’s a picture I took in December 2008 of a protest out the front of the Victoria University Council meeting in the Melbourne CBD, following the University’s announcement that it sacking hundreds of jobs.

Needless to say, there was an enormous outcry and public campaign to stop the job cuts – the largest ever in Australian university history. The job cuts were stopped, thanks to threats of industrial action by staff, and the community campaign that was run in support of staff and students at VU.

Link: Friends of VU.

Was Work Choices a Roadblock to Productivity?

Alex — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:16:25 +0000

A critical assessment of the Work Choices laws in addressing its stated aims and objectives

The 2005 legislation, Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act represented one of the most fundamental shifts in industrial relations laws and Commonwealth-State relations since Federation. With the principle aim of Work Choices to “unleash a new burst of productivity growth”, John Howard described industrial relations reform as “an article of faith for the Coalition parties”. This “article of faith” statement was also allegedly repeated in a speech to the 2005 Liberal Party Federal Council, although this appeal to ideology was not repeated in later public statements.

Using the corporations power in the Australian Constitution (Section 51(xx)), Work Choices sought to introduce a single national workplace relations system, overriding most state industrial relations systems. This in itself was remarkable, upheld by the High Court; until Work Choices it was widely believed that the Commonwealth’s direct role in industrial relations was limited by Section 51(xxxv), limiting powers to make laws to “conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes beyond the limit of one state”.

Work Choices elevated individual statutory agreements (Australian Workplace Agreements, AWAs) as the pre-eminent form of workplace agreement, with enterprise level workplace agreements (collective agreements) and state and Federal Awards relegated to lesser status. The arbitration system, encapsulated by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) that had been a feature of the Australian workplace relations system since 1904 had its role greatly reduced, with new Offices and Commissions responsible for overseeing the application of workplace agreements, setting of minimum wages and settling of industrial disputes.

When introduced to Parliament in November 2005, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews MP said: “the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005 moves Australia toward a flexible, simple and fair system of workplace relations.” The central objective, according to the then-Government was to “encourage the further spread of workplace agreements in order to increase productivity and hence the living standards of working Australians.” For the Howard Government, Work Choices was not merely an economic argument, “it is a moral argument”, with the new laws to create a “good society” and a “brighter future”.

You can download the entire paper here.

A critical assessment of the Work Choices laws in addressing its stated aims and objectives by Alexander White is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Online social activism and Twitter

Alex — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:07:27 +0000

A large part of my job is online communications: blogs, social networking, and new fads like Twitter.

A big challenge is how to use these tools in a meaningful way to support the campaigning and organising activities of the union. How can we engage our members and supporters using the social networking tools they are comfortable with?

A new service, called Twitition (Twitter + Petition) may aid in this.

Twitition allows Twitter users to create and sign short petitions. These petitions can be easily re-Tweeted by friends and followers.

The goal of so many not-for-profits using the Internet and social networking is the Holy Grail of “viral”: a video, email, image or similar that takes on a life of its own and receives massive circulation.

A service like Twitition could help not-for-profits to make their campaigns go viral.

To experiment, I created a Twitition calling on Rudd and Gillard to abolish the ABCC. We’ll see how well that goes.

Australia needs strong collective bargaining

Alex — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:03:43 +0000

The right to collectively bargain was gutted by the Howard Government… unfortunately it looks like the Rudd Government may squib at fully restoring that right. Under the WorkChoices laws, Australian workers have no enforceable right to collectively bargain. Employers can indefinitely delay collective bargaining, denying their employees rights.

Collective bargaining at a workplace level is the most effective way to improve conditions and pay at work.

Paul Keating on collective bargaining:

If you go to 200 or 300 people in a factory or 200 or 300 people in a workplace and come to a three or four year bargain to the improve productivity and share it between wages and profits you’ve got a good chance of getting productivity from the whole enterprise. But if you just take one person at a time, bring them into the boss’ office and cut their wages there’s no chance of getting any productivity. That’s why trend productivity is now rapidly on the way down. It was 3 per cent under me. It’s now under 1 per cent. So how are we going to keep inflation low with, at the moment wages are running at about 4 per cent, productivity is under 1. This is consistent with an inflation rate of 3 per cent, or higher. The Reserve Bank knows that. That’s why they’ve got the rates on hold.

The great lie of the Howard Government in respect of workplace changes, they are simply a set of arrangements to keep unions out of workplaces. They’ve got nothing to do with productivity and the quicker we move away from that kind of discriminatory structure to a truly trust based co operative sharing of work and workloads, then we get back to reasonable levels of productivity and again, reasonable rates of growth in real wages. It’s no accident as you saw in today’s front page of The Sydney Morning Herald and other places that the wage share in the economy has gone down, and the profit share in the last four years has gone up because wages are now in real terms, are declining.

Labor’s policy is to legislate for collective bargaining rights, but it appears as more details come to light that no enforceable rights will be granted to Australia’s workers.

The ACTU is running a campaign to promote collective bargaining.