Cross posted from Solidarity:
The Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations today published a scathing criticism of WorkChoices, saying it is biased towards bosses.
Denis Peters’ AAP story is quite good — it mentions the long list of problems with WorkChoices, including “the minimum wage, minimum conditions and bargaining, unfair dismissals and the role of unions.� But Peters gets one important aspect badly wrong. He writes:
ACCER supports the re-introduction of a no-disadvantage test for workers signing new agreements.
It had no problem with the idea of individual agreements, as long as they had a no-disadvantage test.
This summary implies ACCER’s endorsement of AWAs along with a no-disadvantage test, or with Howard’s so-called fairness test.
The trouble is, Peters has selectively reported ACCER’s views from a press release (pdf). First, he should have reported this unequivocal statement: “ACCER rejects the recently introduced fairness test as insufficient�. Second, he should have quoted ACCER’s full comments about statutory individual contracts.
Here’s what they said (my emphasis):
Mr Lawrence said ACCER does not oppose statutory individual agreements, providing they meet the no-disadvantage test and do not prejudice or frustrate the rights of workers to pursue collective employment agreements.
That second half is vitally important, and can not be ignored. Let’s turn to the full text of the ACCER report to see what it means in policy terms (pdf; my emphasis):
254. … ACCER believes there should be some scope for individual agreement-making through agreements that have statutory force, providing they meet a no-disadvantage test and providing they do not prejudice or frustrate the rights of workers to participate in a union and to pursue collective employment agreements.
255. The use of AWAs to prejudice or frustrate collective enterprise bargaining by unionists has the likely effect of turning the right to union membership into a bare right, devoid of real meaning and effect in the workplace. …
257. An appropriate system of collective enterprise bargaining, capable of flexible operation, should have a number of requirements and features. First, individual agreements should not prevent the making and operation of collective agreements. Second, collective agreements should prevail over individual agreements, either in all respects, or to the extent of any inconsistency. …
I repeat: “collective agreements should prevail over individual agreements�. There is no room for doubt. ACCER is calling for the abolishment of AWAs, and any statutory contract that resembles AWAs.
Let me explain.
You will remember that Labor’s policy is to allow the use of common law individual contracts underpinned by either an award or an EBA. You will also remember the business lobby’s strenuous objection that common law contracts were insufficient because collective agreements prevail to the extent of any inconsistency.
In other words, the only reason the business lobby wants statutory individual contracts is so that they can override collective agreements. ACCER says that’s not acceptable in the framework of Catholic moral teachings.
So when ACCER says it would accept a certain kind of statutory individual agreements, it is really saying that the common law should be codified and brought within the formal industrial relations system. This is not an endorsement of statutory contracts as they are understood in the general IR debate. It is an endorsement of codified common law contracts, a fundamentally different thing.
ACCER’s position on industrial relations supports collective bargaining first, and common law contracts second. It is a complete rejection of AWAs and AWA-like contracts. It says such contracts are fundamentally wrong because they “prejudice or frustrate the rights of workers to pursue collective employment agreements�, and it says “collective agreements should prevail�.
Hopefully this receives more attention.
The above Catholic position was reiterated by Bishop Kevin Manning:
The ACCER took the same line in 2005. Some other churches have been critical as well - not surprising when the majority of welfare support services available in this country are ultimately auspiced by one church or another.
It was all said in an open Papal ‘letter’, Rerum Novarum, well over a century ago. (And reiterated several times, including in an update by Pope JP II in 1981).
Minister Abbott and Andrews somehow missed those encyclicals.
Funny story from Peter Martin about Workaholics Anonymous meetings.
Graeme, our Tony probably cancelled his subscription to the Vatican newsletter when the left the Seminary and Andrews was never a subscriber to begin with.
Evan, I suspect Rudd’s conversion from Catholicism also took him out of this loop. (See today’s latest over-reaction from Rudd. He called John Robertson a ‘bullyboy’ for trying to placate unionists into supporting Labor - rather than the Greens presumably - with the wishful thinking that they could have more influence over Rudd post rather than pre-election.)
“Bullyboy”?!? Given the historical record of Labor’s performance in office, “deluded fantacist” would be more accurate.
Sorry: “fantasist”.
Today’s Galaxy Poll in Melbourne’s Herald Sun reveals that the Coalition’s attempt at portraying unionists as bullies is not working.
According to the Herald Sun:
“Voters were largely unconcerned by the bullying actions of union officials such as West Australian heavyweight Joe McDonald”
20 per cent of voters were now less inclined to vote Labor, but another 67 per cent said they would not be influenced by McDonald’s actions.
That’s over two-thirds of voters who refuse to allow concern about Industrial Relations to be reduced to a single-issue, namely, concern about “union bosses”.
For this and other reasons, Labor continue to dominate the opinion polling, despite all the Canberra-centric predication that Howard is now leading on issues and has Kevin Rudd on the back foot.
For example, consider what Matt Price from The Australian recently wrote on 23 June:
“Kevinism will commit greater funding for universities, scrap loathed Work Choices reforms and take global warming more seriously than the Prime Minister.”
These broad positives may buffer Rudd against concerns about Labor’s union links and the Government’s formidable economic credentials. But, broadly, I think the opposite view prevails among colleagues, pundits and many political insiders. Most people believe on balance the Coalition will probably survive.”
Most people?
Or…most people in Canberra?
Hang on Mr. Price - let’s consider the issue of union bullying versus the issues of I.R. in a broader context, along with education and the environment.
The raw data is suggesting that voters are far more apathetic about the “union bosses” and therefore more active about issues that involve the broader population.
While I’m not assuming Kevin Rudd has an easy task in winning the next federal election, I do assert that John Howard, Joe Hockey and the Mainstream Media are fooling themselves if they think the intervention of union bosses is all that could ever cause a rift between business interest and the worker’s interest.
A Reader’s Digest book has a chapter about The Industrial Revolution that states:
“Relationships (between employer and employee) came to be defined in terms of class, a relatively new concept in the description of societies. Employers owned the means of production: Workers produced. Marx and Engels discussed the situation in ideological terms, forecasting the eventual victory of the employees. The workers themselves, however, were less concerned with ideology than they were with mutual interests. More concerned with improving the workers’ lot - and with collective bargaining - than they were with ideas or with the acquisition of power.”
Another way to understand the concerns of the common worker is to apply game theory definitions: the common worker isn’t interested in a zero-sum game like Communism which requires the downfall of Capitalism just so that the worker can win.
Is WorkChoices more concerned with cooperation between players or is it simply allowing one side of a political spectrum to win points against the other side?
According to reader response comments posted on An Onymous Lefty, the editor of The Australian recently uses the term “dialectical Marxist maze” against his ideological opponents on the Left.
Such hard ideological tooing and froing between Left and Right is exposed as futile when Galaxy data only “reaffirms” a common worker attitude that Reader’s Digest insists has existed since the Industrial Revolution: common workers are apathetic to hard political ideology and instead open to bargaining for mutual benefit.
If a rift now exists between employer and employee, it isn’t because of Unions. Rather, it is because Prime Minister John Howard chose to make Industrial Relations a big issue during this term of Government, without putting “mutual interest” at the heart of the matter.
…From Justin
“To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: (1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the “upper classesâ€?, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for “the lower classes not to wantâ€? to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unableâ€? to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in “peace timeâ€?, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis *and by the “upper classesâ€? themselves* into independent historical action.
Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible.”
-Lenin.
Give me the above quote any day over any static, ahistorical ‘analysis’ by Readers Digest (!) that suggests that
.
In fact, as far as I recall its one of the main points of Marxism that workers take up the struggle because to a large degree material circumstances force them to, rather than them having any allegiance to one particular ideology or another.
BearCave, I consider that poll in my most recent post. I conclude:
Mark,
We might disagree about religion but we are as one on the issue of AWAs.
They’ve got to go. Terrific cross-post Trevor …
BTW, when are we going to get to
crow aboutdiscuss the latest galaxy poll?BearCave has already got the ball rolling …
Chav on 2 July 2007 at 2:20 pm wrote:
“Give me the above quote any day over any static, ahistorical ‘analysis’ by Readers Digest (!) that suggests that
common workers are apathetic to hard political ideology
In fact, as far as I recall its one of the main points of Marxism that workers take up the struggle because to a large degree material circumstances force them to, rather than them having any allegiance to one particular ideology or another.”
Chav, I am certainly interested in something Lenin said last century:
“To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation. Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible.â€?
Okay people, now let’s step across to the other extreme of the political spectrum on the Right and see what they’ve had to say last century:
According to an analysis titled ‘ Fascism for Idiots’ published on the CANIS IRATUS blog:
“Fascism is both utopian and fatalistic. It’s utopian because it promises to resolve all differences and disputes, producing harmony and perfect human solidarity. It’s fatalistic because it believes itself to be the unavoidable future; the logical outcome of a natural or historical process – a process which it variously refers to as Nature, Evolution, History, Spirit, or Will.”
Okay, let’s return to the centre and summarise.
On the Left, you’ve had the Marxists who spoke of “a revolutionary situation, independent of the will”. On the Right, you had Hitler’s “triumph of the will”.
I don’t have the space or time here to do large analysis on the differences and similarities between the two ideas, except to summarise both ideas as “the collective world out there” and “individual will”. Then point out that both ideologies have a history of sidestepping not only the concepts of open democratic societies and individual liberty, but also sidestepping the concepts of scope (by attempting to treat everything as one big game with one big outcome: solidarity between all humans that matter to the cause) and complexity (by imposing oversimplification of reality on individuals).
Much better than two “proven unsuccessful” ideologies of the twentieth century is to reconnect the “situation out there” and “individual will” by “creating a world of our own”.
I do believe a single paragraph from Michael E. Gerber’s small business development guide ‘The E-Myth’ singlehandedly exposes these old ideologies of Marxism and Far-Right-exploited Nationalism as incapable of resulting in constructive change. While Gerber’s interpretation of “creating a world of our own” is limited to establishing our own small business, I think you can apply the same thinking to a broader context. Gerber writes on Page 264:
“We can only change our lives and create a world of our own if we first understand how such a world is constructed, how it works and the rules of the game. And that means we have to study the world and how we are in it. And in order to do that we need a world small enough in scope and complexity to study.”
I think the problem with so much political ideology is that the settled or established opinions, belief, or principles held by “big ideas people” actually frustrate the effort of partitioning complex problems into smaller problems that are small enough for the individual to challenge without their every movement being micro-managed from a central location.
Yes, of course that’s “potentially” a sweeping generalisation of “big ideas people” and so is my point about “common workers being apathetic to hard political ideology”.
Nonetheless, I do assert the raw data collected by Galaxy Poll supports my interpretation of so-called ahistorical analysis by Readers Digest. I also find my attempt to link the Marxist and Fascist uses of the word “will” to be quite a revelation for me (I only researched this tonight and discovered a potential connection between the two).
Instead of pointing to some dogma or another as an absolute first principle for living, I’m simply “weighing evidence”, then “asserting or contesting a position”, while carefully selecting the scope and complexity of my study (something that can probably never be perfected in any case).
Given I wasn’t born just before The Industrial Revolution and Chav wasn’t born just before the Russian Revolution, it’s worth observing the advice of Nick Ewbank, president, History Teachers’ Association of Australia who wrote on Crikey:
“One of the strengths of history as a discipline is that it is contestable – you have to weigh evidence to find out “what really happenedâ€?, not merely read a textbook interpretation of it.
Yes, facts (and dates) are important. Yes, there should be some ‘established certainties’. But there are spaces between those certainties – and those spaces are often the most interesting, the most thought provoking – to explore with students.
History isn’t a dry and remote subject. It should be examined for what it can suggest about the world which we inhabit now, as well as the world that was inhabited in the past – and it may even have something to say about the future!”
…From Justin