I’ve noticed some wild leaps of logic, if that’s the right word, in the “analysis” of Julia Gillard’s Forward With Fairness IR bill. Apparently, everything that may have happened in the past that would scare employers (probably including a return to braces and steel capped docs among the well dressed unionists) will. In almost all cases, if you actually look at the detail of the legislation, the claims made are unsustainable. Ambit claims, presumably…
Andrew Crook had a good piece in Crikey yesterday tracing the origins of all this hoohah:
With business cosying up to Kevin, and Malcolm striving for popular relevance, a cadre of crack News Ltd hacks have been dispatched to wage an IR guerilla war by proxy. Union bashing has been the raison d’être of buttoned-up reporters like Brad Norington for years — when Norington refers to the dreaded return of the ‘IR club’ he could easily be talking about himself. But confronted with a watertight consensus after extensive consultation, the Oz has continued to push an adversarial line that attempts to revive the pitched battles of the 1890s.
…
On Saturday, Norington re-entered the fray, clearly miffed by the lack of love from the Australian Industry Group’s Heather Ridout. In an excruciating piece, Norington gets close to accusing the business lobby of false consciousness — a charge usually leveled at the Oz’s enemies on the Left. What looks like an off-hand comment about the “weird” direction the IR debate is taken as evidence of a looming stoush. Of course, Ridout’s overall backing of the bill remains strong, subject to qualifications.
The tone for the crusade was set by the solemn pontifications of Paul Kelly, of course. Whatever you may say about “class warfare” in this country, apparently the fight must go on even if the red ranks of workers and the corporatist captains of mainstream industry associations have effectively vacated the field.
It’s safe to say the bruising industrial conflicts of earlier eras have petered out, but not for the old guard at News, who’ve been relishing the chance to re-open old wounds. Even if the labour movement was able to somehow use Fair Work to revitalize, it’s doubtful whether unions, with membership in freefall, could achieve anything like the wage gains achieved during the 1960s. The business lobby knows this — that’s why it’s willing to placate the ALP’s union mates by allowing for the in-principle return of collective bargaining. Rupert’s warriors should be sleeping soundly — in a globalised economy the impact on profits of a piece of softly-softly legislation from Down Under will be basically nil.
The irony in this stoush with no stoushing partner is that an extreme level of frustration is on display – even the columnists are probably aware that it would be political suicide for Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals to oppose the bill.
Whilst we’re on the subject of the mirror-Marxism (or perhaps mirror-Trotskyism) of the Right, it’s worth noting a number of examples of would-be organic intellectuals of the ruling class in government, the media and the bureaucracy being much more enthusiastic about the class war from above than real world capitalists. These include:
* The contemptuous attitudes of elements within the Queensland Coordinator-General’s office towards the Century zinc mine proponents’ desire to come to an accommodation with indigenous communities concerned about the project “just tell ‘em to bugger off”.
Returning to the specific post topic:
Of course. A defeated army learns quickly – if it realises that it has been defeated. The thing is that significant sections of the Australian Right are still in denial about the defeat that the 2007 Federal election signified for them on IR, climate change and not a few other issues.
* The statements by various businesses wishing to see a stronger climate change response that they were afraid to put their heads above the parapet on the issue during the Howard Government’s tenure for fear of reprisals in the form of unfavourable government decisions affecting their business.
* The intransigence of pro-development State and Federal bureaucrats in the Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups in resisting even minor proposals for gradual change whilst business and union representatives were achieving consensus with environmentalists and scientists about much more substantial reforms.
This only goes to show that a few weird overlaps aside (eg Hendy), the crazed ldeologues of the Liberal party are unrepresentative of business community – who are pragamtists above all else.
Ridout’s still hoping to score a few amendments in the Senate, sure, but she’s no mug. She’s called game over on workfarces – the OZ needs to live in the now. Its game over – you lost. You can walk, or get carried off.
Hey, way out West the OMG UNIONS RUN line is running in the local rag.
It like Howard is still with us.
I think daylight saving hasn’t gone far enough yet. Still need to wind the clocks forward a few more years….
The Liberals are really showing a crazed approach the new IR laws. You have on one hand Turnbull, the supposed leader, saying WorkChoices is dead and they’re not going to get in the way of the new laws, and on the other hand you have Keenan and Bishop saying WorkChoices isn’t dead and they’ll be challenging the new laws.
Seems like the Liberals are really imploding over this issue and that Turnbull has lost control of some of his front bench. Should be amusing to watch how the Liberals respond to the laws in the Senate next year.
Lefty E: Ridout’s called time on NoBloodyChoices because the replacement is substantially the same. Even under Howard, a significant proportion of business was unwilling to push the law too hard against the unions, which is why the legislation had to be amended, to explicitly prevent silly corporations and nasty unions from reaching a “civilised” agreement.
Now we have Fraud With Finesse, a slightly rejigged version of NoBloodyChoices that keeps most of the anti-union features, but with sweeteners for unions that behave themselves really, really well (and don’t go asking for silly, old-fashioned, things like wage increases, fair dismissal laws and genuine OHS standards).
That’s why Ridout’s on board – FWF keeps the workplace power-pendulum firmly on the side of business.
The crazed response to FWF is – to my mind, anyway – largely a political feint, using the OO and other loopy right media to prevent Labor from caving in to any union pressure to implement IR legislation worth the name.
That’s if the unions (or at least the mainstream ones, and the ACTU) could even get their act together to push for such changes. They’re having enough trouble assembling the spine to oppose the ABCC (the MUA, the Vic ETU and *some* of the CFMEU excepted, of course).
A long long time ago, when I worked for an employer association and the Libs were in opposition, I had a bit to do with Howard and other shadow ministers interested in IR. They hated my association and the then-MTIA (now AIG) because we were actually interested in finding solutions to IR problems as opposed to engaging in endless warfare against the bastard unions. ‘Commercial decision’, namely one made in the interests of the enterprise instead of in support of a political ideology, was one of Howard’s favourite terms of abuse.
Anyway we never got anywhere with them trying to get an IR policy that accommodated the needs of our industry. All they were interested in doing was lecturing us in how we ought to be conducting our affairs, which was a bit rich coming from a motley bunch of suburban solicitors and graziers who’d never managed a workforce in their lives.
It looks like nothing has changed.
Ken, add to that the fact that Howard’s father and family blamed the Unions and the Workers for the great depression. They got “greedy” during the boom of ’28 and drove the honest Capitalists out of business you see.
I think this fantasy has deeply infected the solicitors, graziers and coupon clippers who infest the Liberal party.
This meme makes it almost impossible for a pragmatic industrial relations policy to surface, not helped by the fact that the Leader is from exactly the same middle class background that is the fertile breeding ground for the “blame the workers and the unions for the crisis” shtick. His “don’t give the money to the poor to rescue the economy – give it to the deserving middle class instead” (tax cuts)is eloquent testimony to this.
Huggy
What I could never understand with those business ads was why those CFMEU bovver boys were marching into what looked like a small dress-making shop to turn the lights out.
I mean, is there a single unionised small dress-making shop in the country? Why were small dress shop workers being represented by union officials obviously from the building industry? And why would they turn the lights out? Wouldn’t that just make it harder for those union officials to find their way out of the building when they’d finished being all bovver boyish?
So many questions…….the wierd fantasy life of a Tory.
I’m a union member. I am not an animal!
“Double speak” on industrial relations reforms is rampant…as well as the Murdoch lies, the ACTU joins the government chorus that WorkChoices is dead, when much of it is not to be repealed…
many sections remain, such as allowing employers and the Minister to stop legitimate industrial action and to apply threatening penalties against unions. The denial of the right to strike remains one of the most anti-union repressive regimes in the OECD world. I have posted my analysis in detail on http://chriswhiteonline.org
Professor Harry Glasbeek argues that the Fair Work bill is a sell-out of activists in the Your Rights at Work campaign. Professor Keith ewing writes on lessons for the labour movement from the UK…that we are ignoring.
The fair Work bill assumes a stable booming economy, conceived and written prior to the capitalist financial crisis…and fails to meet the needs of working families in these recessionary times.
Heh. My son calls people who work in financial engineering coin clippers. Such people used to have their hands cut off, but now (or at least until recently) they’re the Masters of the Universe.
I strongly recommend people visit Chris White’s blog and have a read.
Also, this in today’s SMH: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/changes-unfair-to-workers-cameron/2008/12/11/1228585025690.html
Shamaham continues to worship at the Ratty and SerfChoices shrine in today’s Australian.
I don’t know why he’s so hysterical, Gillard has only tinkered at the edges of SerfChoices, altering it to SerfChoices lite. Pretty disappointing.