It would be fair to say that no one expected a week dominated (barren Bill Heffernan aside) by the hysterical IR debate we apparently had to have would end with the government deciding to change WorkChoices in the direction of “fairness�.
Joe Hockey announced over night that the government would legislate to ensure that employees on individual agreements earning under 75k a year would now have to be offered compensation for trading away entitlements such as penalty rates. The “fairness test� is essentially the revival of the no-disadvantage test which applied to AWAs before WorkChoices, and had its origins in Keating’s IR laws.
Since there’s a fair degree of evidence around that employees in the retail and hospitality sector, and in parts of small business, have had conditions like penalty rates and shift allowances removed, it will be fascinating to watch the business reaction. After all, it could be plausibly argued that the government is going “back to the future�.
There’s no doubt the government thinks this is a smart political move. (But, is it really?)
There’s also no doubt that the government’s polling must be revealing that WorkChoices is a huge electoral loser.
Joe Hockey claims that the government never intended that such conditions could be removed without compensation. That’s very hard to square with the deliberate omission of the no disadvantage test.
The government will seize upon this move to claim that they have demonstrated fairness can be ensured without union involvement. It will thus enable them to sharpen their attack on union influence, and from their point of view, reinforce Labor’s negatives while blunting their own.
There’s some plausibility to this. Labor could have gone down this road themselves, and claimed that they weren’t about reinforcing union power but were just trying to ensure fair play. That could plausibly have coincided with Rudd’s ascension. The key thing for unions is that abolishing AWAs reintroduces awards as the point of reference for common law contracts, and as unions are necessarily parties to federal awards, enables them to exercise at least some influence over working conditions even where they are not bargaining on behalf of union members.
The ball is definitely back in Labor’s court.
But it will also be intriguing to see if the hard edge of WorkChoices’ unpopularity can be blunted, whether the electoral malaise the government finds itself in is more deep seated than just this one issue. The consensus among psephologists that WorkChoices has only shifted at best a couple of per cent of the vote towards Labor combined with the persistently large Labor leads in the polls suggests that might be the case. The budget, and Labor’s response to both this move and the fiscal goodies to be handed out next week, will be the test.
J-Ho hits the airwaves to claim there’s nothing wrong with Workchoices, it’s just a small adjustment.
Says that this alteration proves that J-Ho listens to the people.
But as glibly as one might buy a beer on a sunny afternoon, J-Ho says it’s all okay ’cause they’re be a national TV campaign to explain his “back to the future” double shuffle. That’s a fortune wasted in a) advertising Workchoices, and b) explaining changes to Workchoices. Proving on the way out that the Coalition are unchallenged in time & money wasting.
Interesting take on this by the Great Leader, at least as he is quoted in this morning’s Smerald:
‘Something reasonable in exchage’ – the magic words. Employers and employees both will now be required to negotiate on the basis of comparing apples and wombats. Expect to see stories about shift workers asked to trade penalty rates, weekends, and the option of seeing their family in return for half a space four kilometres from the office, between 3.00 and 8.00 on alternate Tuesdays.
Something reasonable in exchage’ – the magic words.
The employer organisations are lining up to say what a good thing Howard’s changes are.
One can imagine – in fact one doesn’t need to imagine, because it happened just a few days ago – what they would say if Rudd proposed the same thing.
It’s all a bit of a joke, really.
Spiros, Peter Hendy was grumbling about the changes through clenched teeth on the ABC at midday.
A long way from lining up to praise I thought….
Peter Hendy crying over spilt milk when he supports the two thousand pages of Workchoices legislation, have the Business Council any idea of how stupid they look?
Memo to Hendy:
“Don’t worry Peter, it’s just another non-core promise.
One that will be quickly discarded following the election.”
JWH
This is actually the IR policy the ALP should have annoucned last weekend. Instead, by returning to the collective bargaining mantra, all Gillard has managed to do is convince already suspicious employers that the Labor changes are really about reinserting unions into the bargaining equation at a point in history when the vast majority of the workers have already made up their minds that said unions are no longer relevent.
Yes, it’s a sellout by Howard, but surely we all know by now that he is nothing if not a pragmatist. Don’t underestimate the popularity of individual contracts among many workers, particularly in marginal West Australian seats. I think this basically neutralises the biggest criticism that Rudd and Gillard have been making of AWAs, that they strip away basic entitlements.
It’s the line Gillard has fallen back on all week when asked by the press pack what exactly is wrong with individual statutory contracts – and now she’s going to have to come up with another reason. And for what? Because Rudd allowed himself to be painted into a corner by insisting he would rip up AWAs.
I think Labor are in real trouble on IR unless they come up with some genuine compromise, and fast.
The NSW Chamber of Commerce supports the changes.
Who knows? Maybe employer groups are like Trotskyists, splitting at every little thing.
Anyway, this explains Rudd’s resoluteness on IR, if not Gillard’s cackhandedness.
Both parties get private polling done about what issues are exciting the voters, and work choices must be a shit sandwich for the government.
The danger for the Labor Party is that while the voters might dislike Work Choices intensely, they might not think that the Dean Mighells of this world are the answer.
And Mark, I suspect you meant the headline of this post to be ironic – I think it’s actually more accurate than you might have intended.
I remember the back-peddling the government had to do over the BAS form. They’re well capable of leaving their grand plans to be managed by incompetents and then being shocked at the blow-back. In that case they responded in time. I for one got a suitably groveling apology from my local member minutes after sending an angry email. By responding quickly the BAS problems were a distant memory by the 2001 election.
I doubt that this retreat will change the vote of anyone who has already lost conditions without compensation, but I suspect there aren’t nearly as many of them as union leaders pretend. Has the government responded in time? We’ll see.
I wouldn’t get too excited for J.Ho, Gareth. As Steve says, “Something reasonable in exchange”
Well wtf is “reasonable”??? Who decides what is “reasonable”?? It ain’t gonna be the employee, I’ll tell you that much.
The idea that this is in the same ballpark as the no disadvantage test is untrue, at least in this sketchy, ambivalent detail.
After all, someone might take loading away by offering “reasonables” that are already on the table. I expect free parking will be the thing most used to screw workers out of their rights under their new vision.
Also, though this point has been covered many, many times already: Companies don’t vote, and there are a hell of a lot more people earning under $75k than those who are.
It stinks, Howard looks like a shifty tool, and I’m looking forward (not) to the new soundbite the liberal party flying monkeys will answer every question with in the next week (“What’s the status on Defence spending, Brendan?” “Well, Kerry, Labor want to drag us back to the dark ages, and the coalition government has listened to the people, without fellating union commie nazi pigs”)
The answer to Craig’s question is yes, but it assumes Labor’s fate is beyond its control.
I stand by what I said here: Howard was always going to take the rough edges off it, but not to the point of Backing Down. This muddles the government’s ability to defend their own turf and attack the opposition, and vice versa (a muddled debate breaks in favour of the incumbents). First one to get a coherent story going wins this issue – I reckon Labor will do it, once they work out what the hell they’re doing over AWAs.
Andrew E – I think your last sentence nails it. Gillard has been so intransigent and insistent about AWAs this week that Labor has so little wriggle room on the issue that it’s only real option for compromise that won’t completely piss off business and the miners is to commit a backdown that is at least equal (and probably greater) than Howard’s today.
patrickg – The arbiter of the fairness test will be the renamed Office of Employment Advocate, won’t it?
And I think Craig Mc’s analysis is pretty well spot on.
I Can see the Accountants salivating already
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21670796-601,00.html
I wonder how much this policy has been cobbled together. The big question that is going to have to be asked over and over again of government ministers is “What constitutes fair?” Are they going to be presented with situation after situation where they are going to have say whether a particular agreement is allowed under this policy? There is a good chance this policy is going to look quite confusing by election day
AWAs are only a negative for Labor in WA
How many seats is that?
anyway Laurie Oats awarded the PM Olympic Gold in Gymnastics for his backflip.
I mean HOW hysterical has the Oz etc been… its unprecedented..is it ?
Have they polling they are not telling us ?
and why isn’t my gravatar working ?
Stateline here in WA had hoped to have a debate on the New Changes between the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry & Unions WA. Unfortunately it turned out to be an interview with Unions WA Spokesperson Dave Ronison as the WACCI refused to appear as they didn’t have any more to add.
Transcript should be up next wekk, but it says a lot if Howard’s Cheer Squad refuses to debate it.
Sorry Gareth, but fuck you. Why shouldn’t Australian unionists in workplaces where they are a majority have the same or similar collective bargaining rights as their counterparts in the US or Canada?
Well said CK. Gareth, you’ll find the current legal situation under workchoices means that even if 99% of the employees wanted to collectively bargain, they couldnt if the boss said no.
I think you’ll agree – thats outrageous.
“I mean HOW hysterical has the Oz etc been… its unprecedented..is it ?”
Not at all. Every time there has been a major development in the IR debate we have had to put up with at least a week of tooth-gnashing and lunacy from the Oz.
See the interesting line being run at Road to Surfdom
Gareth is half-right. AWAs are not about flexibility but de-unionisation. That’s inherent in their legal structure and a core motivation in their use by larger businesses and bureaucracies.
I’m astonished at the amateurism of Howard’s announcement. Business get ONE working day’s notice that AWAs about to be signed – but also those ALREADY signed but in the mail to the registry office – will have to be re-written. Then, he is unable to explain what the new test is, other than a vague ‘fairness’ thing. Apparently, you can lose penalty rates for working anti-social hours, and be compensated by … flexible, ‘family friendly’ hours!
Desperate political tactics. But this is not just policy on the run, it is LAW on the run. And what is Parliament’s role in all this??
The real question to be answered here is what is the baseline for comparison, as a number of commenters have noted. With the pre-WorkChoices AWAs it was the award. However, and I’ll check this over the weekend, but my recollection is pretty clear that awards are being “streamlined” into 15 industry awards by the “Fair Pay Commission” and in the meantime the AIRC has no power any more to update them. If, like the no disadvantage test, this would be applied against awards, has the government instructed the FPC to maintain penalty rates and overtime in awards? If not, then the guarantee, if that’s the comparator, is useless. Because penalty rates aren’t in the legislated minima, the only possible entitlement to them that could lead to them existing at all to be traded off for something “fair” is their presence in an award.
Ken L nails them on that point at Surfdom:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/05/04/ir-reform-noooo-thats-the-other-john-howard/
“Prime Minister, I refer you to your statement that workers will now have to be ‘fairly and adequately” compensated for rights that are traded away.
Don’t your words prove that, up till now, workers have not been ‘fairly and adequately’ compensated under your unfair WorkChoices policy?”
Rinse and repeat until the election.
Not that I think the ALP will be much better at all for workers, (right to strike – who needs it?) but Mr Howard has made a very dangerous decision indeed. I’m still very happy about my $130 on Mr Rudd to win – at $1.80.
BTW, the Oz is largely irrelevant to the election. Watch the mass-circulation tabloids to work out who Mr Murdoch is backing. The Oz is merely playing to its right-wing audience.
spaminated
This isn’t a backflip, it’s a fig leaf. The Employment Advocate has already said he isn’t able to make these kinds of comparisons without speaking to the individual employees involved, so what’s going to happen on Monday? Is the OEA (or the Workplace Authority) going to start interviewing every employee on every AWA lodged? It’s a joke — and that’s before you even get to the loopholes Howard has built in.
Good points in the post, Trevor.
1. The cheque is in the mail.
2. Of course I’ll respect you in the morning.
3. No I won’t come in you mouth.
4. It has to be something reasonable in exchange. That’s a fair return.
Mark, my understanding of Howard’s announcement is that awards – whether ’streamlined’ or not – won’t be the comparator for the fairness test (as they were under the old no disadvantage test.) Rather, the reference is only to what WorkChoices calls ‘protected award conditions’: mainly penalty rates, shift loadings, leave loadings, public holidays, bonuses. Previously these could be fairly unilaterally taken away by bosses, as long as they explicitly said as much in the AWA. Now they need to be traded away.
So the old no disadvantage test operated by reference to the wide-ranging and complex web of minimum conditions set by the relevant industry award. the new system effectively puts in place instead a two tier baseline: the five minimalist conditions in the Australian Fair Pay and Classification Standard, which can’t be traded away, and a second tier of conditions around things like award entitlements to penalty rates and public holidays etc, which can be traded away, as long as there’s a genuine trade.
The ‘genuine trade’ notion raises the same difficulties we saw with regard to the no disadvantage test. First, it’s hard to tell what’s a genuine trade when comparing apples with oranges: to what extent can, say, higher pay compensate for the loss of conditions which go to a workers control over their job. Secondly, ensuring there’s a genuine trade can be adminsitratively a hard slog, and there was some evidence with the no disadvantage test that the office of the Employment Advocate (in the case of AWAs) and the AIRC (in the case of collective agreements) weren’t always that diligent in making sure agreements met the test
The Age seems to sum it up well.
That was my first reaction too because I couldn’t believe they’d be so inept as to acknowledge that WorkChoices was unfair without doing anything sensible to fix it. However as detail emerges it looks like Howard’s got himself in the worst of all possible worlds and taken the spotlight off Labor’s IR problems to boot.
More thoughts in my update to this post which you were kind enough to mention.
Ken, allegedly the envelope where this plot was hatched was in the Brisbane cabinet meeting last week. Obviously the polls are starting to influence the anti-midas touch contagion coming from the Government as a whole.
Ken has hit the nail on the head. Howard needed to be seen as genuine in his attempt to protect peolples pay rates and conditions. Looking at the changes it is clear he is not.
With the media reports today suggesting Howard has done it more as a way of triggering a government ad campaign, it is hard to see what positives he wil gain from it. The first lot of “workchoices” ads were so successful they pulled them early, so it is hard to say how he can change the perception of his legislation that is probably even more entrenched now than it was it was back then.
I certainly can’t figure his motives out, but with the polls about as bad as they can get for a government in Australia you just wonder where he goes from here. Maybe he is losing his political touch.
Mark, penalty rates were retained in the 15 ‘allowable award matters’: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/wra1996220/s513.html
My dim understanding is that the further (and radically incomplete) round of award rationalisation was meant to collapse a lot of industry and other awards into each other. Presumably in that process some awards could lose aspects of previous penalty rates (eg the actual rate or incidence) but the intention was not to strip them.
Yes, Graeme, but allowable doesn’t mean compulsory. And I don’t trust the FPC!
And The Election Bribes keep coming
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,21673259-949,00.html
There is also expected to be significant spending announcements on roads, schools, health programs and services for war veterans – all funded by a Budget said to be well in surplus