I just had to sign an AWA.
(No, this is not a full-time job but rather a casual gig marking university essays. Yes, I mark essays and other assignments. From third years even. If you’re a uni student, I expect you to quake in fear. Quake! QUAKE! Bwa ha ha.)
I haven’t read it all — I know, I know — but it doesn’t seem too awful. So no horror stories from the Brave New World of Workchoices here, yet, but as someone who’s looking for work I do feel as if the ground has shifted a little under my feet.
And, of course, filling out this AWA has hardly been a ‘negotiation’ between myself and my employer. The employer sent me the forms, I filled them out and sent them back. I don’t know if the rates of pay are the same as when I did the work last year, all I know is that I need the money and I’m getting rather bored with writing the odd magazine article and polishing my resume.
So all this rhetoric about ‘choice’ and choosing terms which suit me rings rather hollow. The only choice I had was to whether to fax the form back or mail it.
I’m not sure how is it different from how this system ever was. In all the tutorials and marking I ever did at Uni there was no question of pay negotiation. You want the work, you get the rate we are paying.
Presumably it’s to qualify the university for HEWRS funding. Nelson held out some additional money as a carrot last year if Universities signed up to a range of “workplace reforms” including offering AWAs to all staff.
However you should have been given a choice. When I took up my position at Griffith, the letter of offer contained a response form which asked me to choose between being employed under conditions set out in the enterprise bargaining agreement or whether I wished to negotiate an AWA. I chose the former.
Yeah and I wasn’t expecting negotiation for casual work, I was just pointing out that I suspect most AWAs will be just like this and involve no negotiation at all. Just like in the old days. You’ll just get a contract, sign it, and lump it.
Yes, and what’s significant is that the AWAs can undercut previous rates of pay determined by awards and agreements. So like it or lump it doesn’t just apply to a rate negotiated collectively by the union but to whatever you’ll work for above the bare minimum.
I’ve never so much as skimmed over a contract in my employment life once I know what the pay is and whether there are any unusual provisions. What negotiation? No need for a talkfest. The most potent form of negotiation is the ex ante one - you go for the interview and if the employer gives you a number you don’t like, you go elsewhere.
Sorry that was for Steve.
Mark, I did have a choice but it was communicated to me that it was best just to sign the AWA*. I could have pursued the Award arrangement further but given that I’m only going to be employed for three or four weeks maximum I decided not to push it.
*Not in an aggressive manner but basically just “oh, can you sign that now please so we can get on with it?”
Indeed Jason but the rhetoric around Workchoices is that we will be able to Choose! And Negotiate! And most of us probably won’t… just like the pre-Workchoices days. I’ll leave the heavier economic analysis for the Smaht people.
As an aside, some of us rather foolishly have chosen to work in industries where jobs are somewhat scarce. Now, this is a matter of supply and demand and it does push wages down and I accept that I’m not going to make a fortune pursuing my chosen career path.
Which is ok, because I get a lot of other good things from my career which are more important to me than earning $200k plus a year.
However, in my position the idea of ‘choice’ can be rather ludicrous at times. If I want to work in my field I expect to have limited job choice and it’s very hard to walk away from an employer when I know the next good job offer could be years away.
I’m not saying any of this is terribly world-shatteringly awful, and I know how the world works, and just to use yet another cliche, I’ve made my bed and now I’m lying in it, but the rhetoric of Workchoices doesn’t apply much to a worker like me.
Yes, Jason, what Kate said. The presumption there is that you have choice because your skills are sufficiently in demand.
Let’s not forget also that people moving off social security are required to take any job offered to them, providing it pays the federal minimum wage. That removes any element of choice as to whether to enter an employment contract.
Hi, I’ve been enjoying the writings here for a few weeks now, and this is the first time I’ve been moved to write. I know two people who work in industries where individual contracts have been the norm for years (entertainment/events). The best thing about the contracts offered is the bit that says “employee shall work X number of hours or whatever is required for the success of the event” (it’s a fair bit more legalistic than that but that’s the gist of it!). Both of these people work horrendous hours at times of the year for little/no renumeration. (No overtime, penalties, very little time in lieu etc.) There was no negotiation, just the contract to sign of you wanted the job. . Now, thats fine for them, in many ways they are good jobs with good prospects of promotion, but what happens when conditions like this are put into contracts for jobs that aren’t so good? Desperate people will still sign them, there isn’t always going to be a labour shortage. It’ll be goodbye any prospect of work-family balance, or fair days work for a fair days pay.
Mark says - “Let’s not forget also that people moving off social security are required to take any job offered to them, providing it pays the federal minimum wage.”
That is terrible - a welfare recipient should be allowed to pick and choose what job they take to get off welfare - maybe hold out for a CEO’s slot. It is only fair!
Kate, which uni was it? As Mark said unis have been req’d by the gov’t to offer AWAs to all staff to get gov’t funding. To the best of my knowledge though they haven’t been pushing them. In fact, there would have been no need to sign one as the Enterprise Agreement should have coveered everything anyway. To the best of my knowledge, the AWAs at unis are pretty much carbon copies of relevant EBAs. I hope signing this AWA doesn’t set you up for being automatically issued an AWA without choice in future work gigs at that place. I’d check out with the NTEU (http://www.nteu.org.au) in your state about that for future reference and maybe let them know what has happened because it’s inmportant that these things be monitored.
You wouldn’t do it razor if it cost you money.
EMTRs are horrendously high for these people.
Razor, how many times does Kate have to explain that her point is that despite the Howard Government’s rhetoric, WorkChoices isn’t really about choice - before you get that her point is that despite the Howard Government’s rhetoric, WorkChoices isn’t really about choice?
She said nothing about fairness, although like BBEP I think it is incredibly unfair that we can take advantage of people on welfare by forcing them to take jobs that see them end up with less income than they had when they weren’t working.
Either it’s about choice, or it’s not. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that it’s about choice, and then when someone points out that this particular aspect has little to do with choice to claim that, so what, they don’t deserve choice etc.
What Anna said. The name “WorkChoices” is dishonest.
BBEP - I agree - it shouldn’t cost you money to get off welfare. At the same time I think the use of the term EMTR is wilfully misleading. The loss of welfare benfits is not a tax. I noted recently that one (possibly more)of the members of Costello’s international Taxation Revue thinks that Superannuation is a tax - I, along with many others, disagree. I have yet to invent the new term for the EMTR issue, but expect a Nobel Prize when I do.
Welfare benefits in general fall slower as earned income increases. Therefore, the net position is financially better-off. On top of that there are the intangible benefits of being a useful, contributing member to society.
Welfare should not be that well funded that it can be a lifestyle choice (cf the blogger called Gianna) and, apart from Age and Disability pensions, there should be significant disincentives to making it so.
Welfare is a safety net - not a lifestyle choice. ( And the Howard Government penchant for middle class welfare pisses me off no end but they are better than the ALP and the baby bonus is a nice set of wooden stairs in the new house.)
I will admit to being an admirer of the libertarian 30/30 proposal that I’ve seen around the traps, but I haven’t seen any deep analysis of the impacts of it.
And there is now more choice - workers can negotiate within the law about whatever conditions they want. I negotiate with my wife all the time and don’t generally get everything I want. Doesn’t mean the institution of marriage is dead - does it?
I don’t get holiday pay, over-time, sick pay etc etc - how bad is that??? I negotiate directly with my clients to a. convince them to pay me instead of someone else and b. convince them to pay me enough. I do this constantly in a very competitive environment. And its my CHOICE! Life is about Individual Choices, Actions and Consequences. The sooner more people accepted that rather than blaming others and playing a victim role the better off we would all be.
The example that starts this thread is classic - the atypical lefty made the choice to take the action to sign an AWA and is now bitching about it. Get over it.
I’m not so sure, employers are now free to choose whom they can employ, that is not a ‘dishonest’ choice, that is a business decision.
Employees quit without batting an eyelid, why cant employers exercise the same rights?
Now we all have the choice, work or dont work.
Razor, the reference to Gianna is entirely gratuitous. Don’t do it again, please.
On EMTRs, I suggest you look at reports from the Allan Consulting Group and The Melbourne Institute. It’s entirely consistent with a neo-classical view of economics and markets to assume that EMTRs provide disincentives to entering work and increasing hours. It’s called labour supply theory.
It seems righties only believe in markets when it suits them - otherwise the view is “stuff the poor, poorly paid work is good for them”.
Razor
you’re missing the point of EMTR. Economists use the term because the withdrawal of welfare is an *effective* tax. Purely as a matter of pragmatics and ignoring ’social justice’ considerations (which is how a cold blooded economist like me would see it) why the hell would you want to penalise a welfare recipient with a high EMTR when he/she finds a job? It goes totally against your own objectives of encouraging workforce participation. So, irrespective of linguistics, EMTR has the same effect as a tax and a high EMTR reduces the speed of labour market adjustment by discouraging people from taking whatever job is easiest at hand and on purely pragmatic grounds should be reduced, whatever you think of ‘dole bludgers’.
Furthermore, regarding welfare, the price of not funding it properly is that more people are going to bitch and moan if there is economic restructuring and politicians will end up passing legislation that discourages restructuring (i.e. sacking workers where those workers are no longer needed) and passing legislation that makes the labour market even more inflexible. Again as a pragmatic liberal economist, the importance of facilitating restructuring in the economy (so that resources, including labour) are allocated to their highest valued uses trumps this moralistic conservative fetish with punishing ‘bludgers’ so if the price of a more deregulated product and labour markets is a reasonably generous safety net, on purely cold-blooded grounds I’d think it a good price to pay.
Razor makes right-wing Austrian fanatic Gerard Jackson sound like Tim Costello
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Mark - You say that my comment about Gianna was gratuitous - “Unnecessary or unwarranted; unjustified”. I can’t accept that. I’ve read Gianna’s blog and she has quite clearly stated that she believes that she should be able to raise her child as a single mother on welfare and that it is a lifestyle choice. nothing gratuitous - just the facts.
Mark and Jason - I’m not missing the point about EMTR’s. I acknowledge that the loss of welfare benfits versus the gain from earned income has to be positive for someone to want to go into work. I understand the concept but that still to my mind, just as those in this thread argue that WorkChoice is no choice and some people say superannuation is a tax - I don’t like the use of the term ‘Tax’ as a part of EMTR, and you may have missed the humour in that I thought I might get a Nobel Prize in Economics by inventing another term - we’re stuck with it and I understand that.
I was also quite clear in that I believe we need to try to reduce the EMTR in the welfare to work transition. And I reckon I would get a Nobel prize if I could come up with an effective solution.
Mark - as for what you think my attitude to the markets is - I earn a living on the markets every day, unlike most lefties.
Jason - you think “I’d think it a good price to pay” - you obviously aren’t in either the top marginal tax bracket or operate a small business. I effing bleed tax - PAYG, GST, CGT, Superanuation Taxes, State Stamp Duties and Licensing, Coucil Rates and on and on.
No Razor, I don’t run a business but I do pay a shitload of tax too. But the point is I have no beef with the unemployed because I think we could provide a pretty generous safety net at a far lower tax rate than what we’re now paying because of churning, and other non-transparent subsidies.
Razor, fair enough on the irony. Apologies if I missed it - it’s not hard to do just working with text without verbal and body language cues.
I think Gianna uses the term “lifestyle choice” just as a redrag to RWDB bulls.
Jason and I probably have similar views on tax btw.
I don’t necessarily think that you can imply any virtue by earning a living on the markets - I’ve been self-employed, and I’ve worked in profit making businesses. It’s a choice people can make, but not everyone. One of the silliest things Rudi Guiliani ever said that the solution to poverty was for people in the Bronx to start lemonade stands.
Razor and Co.
I don’t think you can really leave out tax from EMTR, as it’s one of the components. I’ve wondered about using a different term too, as the word tax rings too loudly when you say effective marginal TAX rate. Given that we are talking about the combined impact of a number of tax-transfer system elements, how about “tax-transfer withdrawal rate”, or TTWR. Then you could have an ETTWR or an ATTWR (for average tax-transfer withdrawal rate).
Doesn’t roll off the tongue like EMTR though.
razor wrote:
“…I negotiate with my wife all the time and don’t generally get everything I want. Doesn’t mean the institution of marriage is dead - does it?”
The institution is certainly alive, but I’d be a bit concerned about the health of one that is approached as an industrial agreement - or indeed a job to which one is wedded.
Kate, my branch NTEU rep is advising everyone here to just throw AWAs straight in the bin. But it’s easier said than done when you’re doing piecework on short term contracts. Much as I love my friendly neighborhood union organisers they don’t seem to appreciate that much of their advice just isn’t practicable for casuals.
I think with the kind of shit that’s descending it’s going to be important to pick your battles carefully, and your situation isn’t one to go to the barricades over. I strongly agree with Michael that the local branch needs to know about how the AWA was presented to you though.
Well, in my department, we’ve seized the photocopier area, and, after overcoming stiff managerial resistance in and around the biscuit box, have forcibly collectivised the staff room.
All management figures have been seized, roundly critiqued, forced to ‘pass’ AWAs (lets see how ‘flexible’ you are, Dean), summarily spanked, then denounced again!
Anyway, the upshot is, you’re all pussy-footing around with this primitive ‘union consciousness’ phase.
VI Elitist.
morganzola wrote:
“razor wrote:
‘…I negotiate with my wife all the time and don’t generally get everything I want. Doesn’t mean the institution of marriage is dead - does it?’
The institution is certainly alive, but I’d be a bit concerned about the health of one that is approached as an industrial agreement - or indeed a job to which one is wedded.”
Much less the health of one that was as unequal a power relationship as that between employer and employee. I think it’s a bit spooky of razor to regard his marriage as analogous in any way. Can’t help wondering what mrs razor would say.
this may sound lke a silly question, but I’ll try it on.
I worked overseas as a local hire in a place where you were deemed to be an “employee at will”, which meant you could be fired without notice and given two weeks sev.
As I work for myself here and don’t need help I don’t know the “rig” as far as getting a job in Oz.
I see most of you refer to employment contracts..
Do most people have to sign an employment contract here? Why? And what does it contain? Are they necessary?
Jason Soon:
After what has been made known about exploited guest-workers and sex-slaves (of course, you’re neither, are you?), I am amazed you didn’t read the fine print of a work contract.
Naturally, wanting to actually read the contract means you won’t get the job. So much for justice in Soviet Australia.
Just because you are, presumably, a citizen and a taxpayer, don’t expect the Australian government to give you A N Y protection whatsoever once you’ve signed.
William Wilberforce, please return; we need you now.
Great news! early polling suggest the coalition is on an absolute hiding to nothing with the Workchoices Fiasco [link]
Seems to me that Razor is one of those fellows who simply cannot accept the power imbalance between employer and employee. There may be exceptions, but you’ve really got to remember the rule.
I have no time for a detailed discussion about WorkChoices when such a basic premise is up for debate.
You should see the AWA I’ve got the kid and the dog on!
Having a bit of trouble with the Mother-in-Law - takes a very CFMEU style to the negotiating table.
Just going back to the subject of this post - “I just had to sign an AWA.” Typical leftie victim phrasing - let’s be clear - she didn’t “have” to sign the AWA. She chose to.
Hello, Razor? If Kate wanted the work, what choice did she have?
Mark, there are lots of things in this life that we all want. We make choices in relation to these wants.
If she wants the job then she can negotiate - it clear above that she had the chance to negotiate if she wanted to. It appears that her desire to uphold her leftist principles was not great enough.
Razor, what Kate is talking about is temporary casual work - marking a batch of essays. If she or anyone else offered it said “hang on, let’s negotiate”, it would simply be offered to someone else as it needs to be done in a narrow time frame.
Well, the negotiation phase depends a lot on the employer. A former colleague’s relative was employed by Andrews’ dept, Employment and Workplace Relations, as a graduate with the only option available on joining an AWA. When its term fell due, she had done her research and told her employers that she wanted what people at her level with her experience were being paid doing comparable work in other departments. She was told that the offer was in front of her, and no alterations would be made to it or accepted. She asked whether it wasn’t supposed to be a negotiation process, and was laughed at.
WSFTOTA:
—”She was told that the offer was in front of her, and no alterations would be made to it or accepted. She asked whether it wasn’t supposed to be a negotiation process, and was laughed at.”
Well, welcome to Soviet Australia, where all workers are highly paid and free to change their generous work contracts whenever they like.