There’s some fascinating research being published from the ANU democratic audit of Australia. In looking at data from the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and the 2004 Austalian Electoral Survey, Scott Brenton found negative correlations between working class indentification and lack of tertiary education and confidence in political institutions. You can access the report here [link to .pdf].
The higher a person’s income, the more likely they are to believe that politicians know what ordinary people think… Furthermore, people with university degrees and middle-class identifiers were more likely to believe that politicians know what ordinary people think.
This shouldn’t surprise us. “Aspirationals” and the non-rich 80k earners are constantly being told they’re the great middle. And tax cuts are targetted at the upper echelons. The consistent finding from the study is that on a range of questions, working class people, the less educated and the less well off have much more distrust in a range of public and political institutions. This works nicely for the Howard Government, as it’s able to thump the populist drum and pose as anti-political, while at the same time reassuring high income earners that they’re just ordinary folk. The Howardians can’t lose either way.
Another good example of the practical skewing of Government policy towards high income earners is in the changes to unfair dismissal law just announced (about which there’s some discussion at Catallaxy). Currently people earning over $64000 a year are excluded from the provisions relating to the ability to take action in the AIRC for unfair dismissal. However, this doesn’t leave such employees unprotected - as they can take a common law action in contract. With the new provisions, no-one working in the 90% of Australian workplaces with fewer than 100 employees will be able to go to the AIRC to seek a statutory remedy for unfair dismissal.
The arguments in favour of this move are specious. I’m yet to see any evidence demonstrating a net employment gain from making it easier to sack people aside from the figure of 50,000 jobs created Reith pulled from his hat a while back. The perceived need for the provisions relating to unfair dismissal supposedly also relates in part to frivolous or vexatious claims being made. However, this is already prevented by legislation - the Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment) Act 2002 which enables the commission to form a judgement early on that a claim has no chance of succeeding and also prohibits “advisors” (ie union officials or solicitors) from encouraging an applicant to pursue an untenable claim.
The practical effect of removing these protections will be that high-income earners will be able to go to court to enforce their common law rights in contract. The majority of the workforce earning less than $50000 a year won’t be able to afford to. This can be contrasted with the ease of accessing statutory rights in the AIRC. So the practical impact of this aspect of the Workplace Relations “reforms” will be to render most Australians incapable in any practical sense of enforcing rights in contract law they enjoy on paper.
What’s to trust about the actions of the Government?
Elsewhere: Nic White skewers Minister Andrews on the logic of his case for IR Reform. I saw the Minister on Lateline tonight and lost track of how many claims he made that were duplicitous at best (for instance he repeated the furphy about frivolous actions I’ve discussed above). Maxine McKew’s questioning of him was very soft, I thought. She allowed him to get away without answering the obvious question that if we live in an industrial and employment paradise there’s no urgent need for further change, and failed to press him on his spurious assertion that we had a system designed for the 1890s until now.
Update: John Quiggin argues that the Government’s IR reforms are about reducing the bargaining position that employees normally enjoy during periods of economic expansion and low unemployment. I agree. This is the real motivation.
There’s a passionate post at Psephological Catechism, while Flutey urges people to join unions. Tim Dunlop characterises the IR Reforms as a struggle for the heart of Australia. The Pigs Are Flying examines Howard’s New Industrial Order.
Mark, just to correct an error: “I‚Äôm yet to see any evidence demonstrating a net employment gain from making it easier to sack people aside from the figure of 50,000 jobs created Reith pulled from his hat a while back.”
This figure was not pulled from Reith’s hat, not unless he was sitting on it at the time.
I stand corrected, Tim!
Who’s Edwards? The Minister’s name is Kevin Andrews.
Transcript of said interview is now avaliable.
This is a classic Howardian IR package - make life easier for the employers at all costs, allowing them to maximise profit because that helps the economy (supposebly), at all costs. The fact that workers will get screwed over badly is of no consequence.
“But the economy!” Id say the state of the economy is not going to matter much to someone who just got given their marching orders because they became expendable.
Fixed. The guy’s such a nonentity I can never remember his name.
In a sense it’s going to create an unemployment problem when all these people who are apparently useless are sacked and have nothing to demonstrate to potential new employers that they contested the reasons for their dismissal. I hope Centrelink and the job network are ready to deal.
And problems for people applying for benefits. Centrelink currently requires you to demonstrate that your termination wasn’t voluntary (say you were forced to resign) and one way to do this is to demonstrate that you’ve contested your employer’s “constructive dismissal” (ie bullying or forcing someone to quit is treated the same way as sacking them) in order to prove this.
Maxine asked the Minister why the legislation set up a different standard for organisations with 100+ employees. He answered that they had HR people to make sure processes were followed. So - it doesn’t matter if you don’t follow due process unless you’re a large employer? Hello? Maxine wasn’t good. That’s an obvious challenge.
Talk about a fucked situation. The Catallaxy folks are in charge of industrial relations. Let’s hope their libertarianism is up to the challenge of a whole lot of pissed-off sacked free people.
Why are they doing it? Perhaps to create the conditions for class war - that cannot be right, because John Howard denies class differences. I heard the suggestion it would increase productivity, which is not clear to me how, other than to externalize the costs of employment, while deepening the class divide.
I do not really understand the economics of this, except my sense is that the “knowledge economy”, however described, based on the computer, not the factory system, demands in its future development the application of intelligence and creativity, rather than intimidation and docility.
If I am correct, this is just another example of regressive political and social management. Another example, would be the support of the coal-based energy production instead of making the transition, and in doing so obtaining international competitive advantage, by moving to new alternative energy industries.
Like refugees, the underclass are having their rights excised, except this time the ambition is to apply to the whole of Australia. As we now know, this is Howard’s way.
re what Kim said, having a HR department does not meant the the proper processes are followed. In my previous employer the managers used the HR process to their advantage to intimidate employees (HR head didn’t have any spine as well). There was one case of constructive dismissal where the grounds for the managers’ complaint were so obviously fabricated that we encouraged the dimissed employee to sue (he didn’t in the end).
Mark
On that comment you made elsewhere about s 109 inconsistency, I doubt that the Commonwealth would fail effectively to exclude state legislation from providing for wrongful termination, but your question raises some interesting issues. It’s certainly true that the Commonwealth legislation would need not only to repeal the wrongful termination provisions of the Workplace Relations Act for companies having less than the specified turnover or number of employees, but also provide that no legislation either Commonwealth or state could make or permit such provisions for such companies. However, the High Court has said that the Commonwealth cannot merely legislate to exclude the states from a particular field of activity, it must legislatively occupy that field itself in order for s 109 to operate to invalidate inconsistent state laws without the Commonwealth itself enacting a specific legislative provision in that area.
However, the Commonwealth IS enacting a specific provision in relation to wrongful termination. And “cover the field” is only one of several tests of inconsistency. The others involve finding a direct inconsistency/collision between a valid Commonwealth law and an otherwise valid state one. Presumptively, a Commonwealth law which not only abolished Commonwealth wrongful termination provisions for particular types of trading corporations but also prohibited any agreements or awards whether state or federal which incorporated wrongful termination provisions for such companies, would involve a direct collision with a state law or award which purported to do so. Since the Commonwealth has power to enact laws about trading corporations, that would be valid and the state law would be invalid to that extent. However, I haven’t had time to look at the Howard bill yet, so all this is purely speculative as far as I’m concerned.
Maxine McKew’s questioning of him was very soft, I thought.
The latte and chards set are not gonna be much use in this conflict I fear - too real for and too remote from them, at the same time.
I wish someone could definitively define middle class welfare for me?
It seems middle class welfare applies to anyone that receives welfare payments no matter what their class may be.
Also didn’t we try to eliminate the class system or at least stop referring to it at one point.
What is middle class? It seems to be a form of doublespeak for whatever policy tickles you at the moment to me.
I cannot form a coherent opinion on middle class welfare, if I don’t know what it is.
Middle Class Welfare: n., (political). Government support to the undeserving, as opposed to support for battlers, cotton farmers, elite athletes, defence contractors.
Flexible Workforce: n., (political). Bend Over, Here It Comes
Vee, it doesn’t necessarily mean welfare payments per se. It’s the whole gamut of government transfers (including tax rebates) which go to people who are relatively advantaged - ie income splitting, family payments that aren’t means tested, tax dodges, health insurance rebates, etc etc.
And what Liam said.
Vee, the whole question of class is very complex. You can look at it like the social scientists who did the research I’m referencing - self-perception of status (ie - “I’m a working class man”) or based on income or type of work. You can look at it from a socialist point of view - where you analyse inequity and unfairness and the degree to which there are distinct political and cultural characteristics of working class and middle class people.
Indeed, lots of people decided not to think in those terms. Normally conservative people. The rhetoric of unity beloved of Tory parties everywhere denies the salience of class differences. Howard’s project includes an aim of getting working class people to think of themselves as entrepreneurial or contractors, or to “aspire” to enter the middle class or consume its symbols (MacMansions etc).
Chris is right, I think - this has the makings of an old-fashioned class stoush. Good!
“Old-fashined” being the operative word. The quaint 1930s-style perceptions of “class” as displayed in this post and its comments thread are about as relevant to modern Australian politics as a discussion of the impact of the horseless carriage on workers in the horseshoe industry.
Still, watching the final death throes of the establishment Left may prove amusing.
Quite. These IR reforms aren’t about improving conditions for workers or even for business, they’re about a Government obsessed with smashing the unions.
So, EP, how do you get on with your boss? Better start being a whole lot nicer.
The irony of these “reforms” is that they’ll probably give unions a boost as people rush to sign up for fear that their now unconstrained boss will sack them.
The unions are destroying themselves quite adequately without the government’s help. If this legislation was as bad as you’d like to believe, it would actually help unions by encouraging workers to join them.
Far from being the evil worker-bashing nightmare you portray, it seems to me that this reform merely pares back some of the excesses of legislation passed by the former Labor government, which made it almost impossible to dismiss non-performing employees.
If the opposition parties had been willing to compromise on issues like this, they might not have lost control of the Senate. Now the ALP will reap the rewards of its intransigence.
non-performing employees
Like people who spend all day commenting on blogs?
Blog commenters need to form a union.
Second that emotion.
Rob Corr had an interesting ‘union blog‘ scheme going a while ago.
Amidst a plethora of praise for the IR reforms in the American, Brad Norington reveals what they actually mean for workers.
Vee: Middle class welfare is returning income via welfare payments, tax rebates and concessions, etc to those you’ve already taxed at usurious rates and if you didn’t return same, you’d never get away with it politically. It makes politicians feel useful and employs public servants shuffling the relevant paperwork. Freakonomics where everyone gets to feel important and charitable.
The acid test of the tale of woe here, regarding relaxation of unfair dismissal laws, will be to observe what happens to the ratio of the proportion of full-time to part-time workers after enactment. If the proportion of full-timers rises significantly then the govt’s stance will be vindicated. The results(or trend) should be in by the next election and if the govt’s assessment is wrong, then clearly it will become an important election issue. IMO we should try this experiment to settle the debate once and for all as there is no time like the present, with unemployment at historically low levels.
On the “experiment” aspect, observa, I’ll quote Dave Ricardo writing at Catallaxy:
Kim said “Maxine asked the Minister why the legislation set up a different standard for organisations with 100+ employees. He answered that they had HR people to make sure processes were followed. So - it doesn‚Äôt matter if you don‚Äôt follow due process unless you‚Äôre a large employer? Hello?”
Exactly.
The killer follow-ups for Maxine to ask would have been
“Why should the size of the organisation affect the rights of the worker?”
“Why should a worker in a 100+ organisation have more rights than a worker in a -100 organisation?”
“Why should there be two classes of employees?”
“Why, if the system is not working because of frivolous claims, shouldn’t you fix the abuse rather than take rights away from a whole class of people?”
They’ve got a valid point Mark. That’s why I would suggest we need to concentrate on the relevant proportions of FT/PT workers, whatever the absolute level of unemployment.
Hey, you’ll love this. My Margolian public servant older sister is re-married to a naturopath/homeopath in his own biz. She helps out with the accounts a bit. Anyway their full-time receptionist came in with a med certificate for two weeks off, which created a bit of a crisis. So brother-in-law pops round to the employees place the next night to pick up the spare keys to the office and gets told by the daughter, mum’s in Bali for two weeks with a new ‘friend’. He reckons she’s probably using up her sick leave and will resign soon. Now sis who had some months off from PS on stress leave last year(and travelled interstate herself)is going ballistic over the receptionist’s behaviour. Bloody priceless these leftys!
“Why should the size of the organisation affect the rights of the worker?”
“Why should a worker in a 100+ organisation have more rights than a worker in a -100 organisation?”
Because William, these organisations have full-time HR Depts and the resources to very carefully vet and screen prospective workers, which SMEs largely don’t. This would allow SMEs to hire more people full-time(rather than casual probation as they do now)without the fear of being lumped with the costs of a long term dud.
Most employer associations offer HR services to small businesses either on a consultancy basis or as part of their membership fee, observa. You’d have to think that costs in spending a little on recruitment would be less than churning a lot of “unsuitable” employees through their workforce continually.
And it doesn’t say much for the common sense that your salt of the earth business owners have if they’re continually making disastrous selection decisions.
“You‚Äôd have to think that costs in spending a little on recruitment would be less than churning a lot of “unsuitable” employees through their workforce continually”
You’d think so Mark, but unfortunately it’s not true for most small business with 10-12 or less employees. Shelling out 3 months salary to a recruitment agency is not generally cost effective for most small business, given the calibre of candidates they’ll foist on you. You often take on someone known to the group and it’s a case of gut instinct and suck em and see. One benefit of relying on a group member’s recommendation is the recommender generally doesn’t want to upset the group with a poor choice. It’s not just ability but also a case of ‘fitting in’ and the group is always nervous about a square peg in a round hole. You can get all that right but still be faced with an employee going off the rails a year or so down the track. Even if you haven’t experienced an unfair, unfair dismissal case yourself, there are plenty that have and the grapevine makes all employers wary of permanent employment generally. That’s why I think abandoning unfair dismissals would be good all round. The truth is the last thing employers want is high staff turnover. It’s costly bedding in any new starter, irrespective of their skills and experience. Interesting to note a survey recently showed 10% of workers expected to change their jobs in the next 12 months. When they do give notice, the workplace doesn’t have the benefit of unfair resignation laws. ie You can’t leave until a suitable replacement is found. That’s where any AWA should have legislated equal notice terms for both the signatories to be fair.
What I mean by legislated equal notice terms is it must be equal by mutual agreement. eg you might both agree to 1 day’s notice for the first 3 months, moving to 2 weeks after that and say 4 weeks after 6 months or whatever. Whatever the parties agree must be equally binding on both. Employers also have a strong vested interest in not losing an employee without reasonable replacement terms, just as employees need reasonable notice terms.
observa, your suggestion about compelling people to remain in a job is bonded labour. The underlying principle of the employment relationship is freedom of contract.
So, Mark, why can’t an employert have freedom of contract?
Be more specific, EP. Employers have a large range of choice open to them at the moment in terms of types of employment (ie short term contract vs. permanent, casual vs. full time) and also how the terms are set - a minority of Australian employees (usually those in service industries and in small businesses) are on award wages alone - and most surveys indicate that small business owners are also happy with this. But it’s open - except where prohibited by the provisions of a certified agreement (to which an employer has agreed) - for employers to negotiate AWAs or common law contracts with individual employees rather than paying award terms or collective negotations leading up to a certified agreement.
There’s no court in the land that would uphold the right of an employer to prevent someone leaving a job - and nor should they. Increasingly, courts have also been striking down provisions which seek to stop employees working for competitors as being in restraint of the freedom to offer one’s services to any employer.
The wide variety of choices of employment type goes both ways — it works for employees too.
Since no court would uphold an employer’s right to force an employee to work for them*, why should any court uphold an employee’s right to force an employer to employ them?
If your argument is to be consistent, it must apply to both parties, not just one.
*Except the family court, which forces non-custodial parents to work for custodial parents for periods of up to 18 years.
That makes no sense EP. When you enter into an employment contract the legal presumption (at common law) is that it’s an arrangement that continues indefinitely between the two parties unless stipulated expressly otherwise. Nobody can force an employer to employ them. However, once an employment contract is made between the two parties, neither can escape the contract without due cause.
Employers are about to find out that the common law offers protections to employees. So anyone who treats the abolition of the unfair dismissal provisions as a licence to sack people at will would be very ill advised. As an industrial lawyer pointed out in the Fin the other day, the common law of employment places duties on employers just as the statutory provisions which are to be revealed do.
However, once an employment contract is made between the two parties, neither can escape the contract without due cause.
What sort of ‘due cause’ must an employee present in order to terminate a contract?
If it’s due notice, then we’re back to Observa’s proposal.
Yes. I don’t see why we are. The common law principle developed to give people freedom to choose their employer. It developed in response to feudalism, bonded labour and slavery. Perhaps that’s what you’d prefer to see, EP.
Your reasoning, and observa’s, is completely contrary to the principles on which Howard bases his reforms - that is to say, uncoerced individual bargaining directly between parties to the employment relationship. It’s also contrary to any notion that the market ought to establish the price of labour. If you restrict people’s right to choose among employers, you empower employers greatly in terms of forcing people to accept terms and conditions and treatment they don’t like.
There are of course practical issues here - whether or not a person has another job to go to, how marketable their skills are, if not - the fact that they don’t immediately qualify for benefits if they leave employment voluntarily. This impacts already on people at the bottom end of the labour market - their bargaining position is already weakened by the fact that they may not find work easily if they leave their current job.
If you want to make the case for feudalism, go ahead. I’m not going to continue to have this interesting debate with you - I’m off to read a book.
I’d also suggest you read up on the law of contract, EP. There’s nothing in contract law which says that the terms of the contract have to provide equal obligations for both contracting parties. All that’s required is that both parties benefit in some way from entering into the contract, and the usual tests for a valid contract - that there is consideration for the contract, the parties agree to be legally bound etc. etc. Freedom of contract also means that contracting parties can enter into agreements with assymetrical terms. However, the courts have recognised that power between employers and employees is not equal and therefore the law of contract has developed implied provisions which are read into contracts by the court. However, it would take me too long to give a lecture on contract law tonight. I can send you my lecture notes from teaching Employment Law a few years ago if you want. Off to do some reading!
Now that you’ve thoroughly contradicted your earlier assertion that “the underlying principle of the employment relationship is freedom of contract” and retreated from the field, I have nothing more to add.
EP, there’s no contradiction. It’s just that you don’t have a clue what a contract is. People are free to enter into contracts of employment but that doesn’t mean that your employer owns you! Just as when I enter into a contract for the supply of goods, there may be provisions about shifts in the price which potentially disadvantage me but that’s the risk I take if I think the contract is to my net benefit. I have no idea what you think a contract is - maybe this is a Tony moment where I ask you to reflect on its meaning in business reality instead of some sort of nutty ideological fairyland.
I thought you were some sort of libertarian not a feudalist like observa or a reflexive pro-business conservative.
I am some sort of libertarian.
That’s why I don’t believe that if an employer and employee enter into a contract, the employee should have more rights than the employer (as Mark suggests).
If an employer can’t force an employee to work, then neither should an employee be able to force an employer to employ.
sperm theft.
that is all
Good point, Zoe, since we’re talking about forced labour.
women can use sperm theft and the Family Court to legally force men to act as indentured labourers for up to 18 years. Over 400,000 men are legally enslaved in Australia (though of these, actual victims of sperm theft are probably a minority).
Yet the people who are most concerned about forced labour seem unconcerned by this modern-day slavery, enforced by the Child Support Agency.
Why the difference in attitude?
oh, I dunno …
because poverty is not mostly made up, and sperm theft mostly is?
The poverty of many men enslaved by the “child support” system is mostly not made up. As for sperm theft, there isn’t enough information to be sure of how much is “made up”. In the case of paternity fraud, there’s plenty of evidence that it runs between 10% and 30% of children.
So in any case, it’s conclusive that men are on the whole treated as indentured labour by a family law system that has no regard for truth, fairness or natural justice.
This is certainly a far greater scandal than a few reforms of industrial relations legislation, and it was fortuitous that you chose to bring up the subject.
I do what I can, Evil.
Now you do me a favour, and explain proper how your paragraph two “conclusively” follows from paragraph one.
There are some steps left out of the reasoning between paragraphs one and two, since I don’t want to spend all night typing.
However, it’s been demonstrated by many people in many ways that teh family court and “child support” system largely exists for the purpose of exploiting men — at least, this is the main output of the system.
While exploitation of men for the benefit of ex-partners is endemic in the system generally, it is particularly nasty in those cases where theft or fraud has occurred and the system penalises the victim in order to reward the offender.
Thus, in the case of sperm theft (unknown percentage) or paternity fraud (10% to 30% of cases), it can be conclusively saifd that men are treated as indentured labour by a family law system that has no regard for truth, fairness or natural justice.
Evil, I don’t know if you have any other hobbies. Apparently many quality broadsheets are now running a daily logic game called “sudoku” or something like that.
Go and have a look at them for a bit, rustle yourself up a better argument than “there are some steps left out because typing wearies me”, and we’ll have another chat.
I’m off to rub elbows myself. Night all.
Night Zoe - enjoy your elbow rubbing. Unfortunately, despite two invitations for same tonight, I am getting over a bad cold so it’s a solitary night in front of the teev for me.
EP - your interpretation of employment law is obviously prey to your views on sperm theft.
Employers have a legal right to direct employees to work. They also have a legal right to continue to employ people without providing work for them to do. Employees have a legal duty to work diligently as directed provided the directions are lawful and as envisaged by the terms of the contract (things like duty statements can form a term of the contract). Employers do not have a right to dismiss employees on a whim or terminate a contract without due cause.
Hayek was a great believer in contract.