The Labours of Howardcles
John Howard is pushing ahead on his long-standing wish to gut organized labor and leave the unions for dead. From his strike-breaking days on the Patricks wharves – and earlier – he’s been looking for ways to reform Australia’s industrial relations conditions in favour of management vs. workers, and with his pending control of the Senate, his agenda looks likely to begin in earnest. Read the Australian’s editorial carefully to see Howard’s intentions: reducing workers’ recourse to unfair dismissal protection - a way of allowing businesses to hire more workers, or does it make it easier to make unreasonable demands in exchange for lower wages? Oh, yes, the AIRC won’t be setting minimum wages now; that’ll be handled by a new, separate agency, one that will work within the scope of “economic conditions” – whose? Does that mean in a robust economy with low interest rates, wages can go down? Does that mean in a weak economy, when businesses are struggling, wages can go down? “By reducing the number of issues covered by industry-wide awards, people in individual enterprises are given more power over their own affairs,” says the editorial, but doesn’t that really mean that workers have fewer protections? Isn’t “people in individual enterprises” really “business owners who dislike the awards system”? “Why employers with 100 staff will be exempted from the unfair dismissal laws, but those with 101 are not, is hard to fathom,” but only to The Australian, who would prefer the elimination of such law entirely. Howard presents his reforms as cleaning out the industrial relations Augean stable, but he’s just shovelling manure.