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the fundamental ideological shift made by the Howard Government to abandon conciliation and arbitration along with the role of worker and employer representatives in that system.

Conciliation and arbitration as central processes in Australian IR were abandoned in the 1980s. Unions will cease to put up with the rolling back of arbitration as soon as they and their members cease to benefit from EBAs.

This process politicises our minimum conditions.

Yes. I welcome the rejection of the principle that wages and conditions should be set only by worker and boss.

Wrong. Federal public sector ‘Awards’ are in fact collective agreements. Paid rates awards have not been permitted in the federal jurisdiction since the WRA 1996.

State awards come closer to your mark, but the point about bargaining establishes the point made here by Siewert. State public sector workers are able to bargain collectively.

Get over the fact that neoliberal labour market approaches are as popular as a pork chop in a synagogue, and stop calling people ‘ignorant’ when you are misleading people either deliberately or inadvertantly about an important point.

Without condoning what Government Rudd is doing, surely there is value in seeing this issue as integral to the Climate Change adjustments yet to come: that flexibility is required for an economy that will necessarily shift. Again, not to agree with it, yet Govt Rudd with much to juggle within the Australian agenda let alone any effects of possible world downturns may be wanting to keep as many balls in the air as possible. (I don’t think “growing them” is a fair criticism in this perspective; it’s a case of getting the policy mix IR and CC right, whatever that is).

The point here is also to acknowledge the difficulty of managing for the future in testing times. With a passing thought this is pressing now against the backdrop of the wasted years.

Firstly, award workers are by definition low-paid and face significant barriers to participating in fair bargaining (…that is why they are award workers and not on another form of agreement). These clauses operate like AWAs for these workers, and given that they can affect penalty and overtime rates, they can potentially lead to even less take-home pay.

Complete ignorance of the award system. Plenty of workers on awards are anything but low-paid. Have a look at public sector awards.

The ALP is not “ripping up” Work Choices or even significantly rolling it back – rather this Government is explicitly accepting the basic architecture of the Howard plan, including the trashing of the award system.

It will be interesting to see how much longer Australian workers and their unions continue to put up with it…

A large part of the anti-Workchoices campaign conducted by the unions amounted to little more than pro-ALP election support. This is a great shame, as one of the few positive things that can be said about Workchoices is that it gave unions and workers a reason and opportunity to organise and fight for better pay and conditions. The ‘anyone but Howard’ mentality has seen the ALP elected (largely on the back of swings in blue-collar areas), but nothing much has been gained by workers in the meantime.