Tag Archive for 'unions'

Polls show privatisation hurting Bligh, and Rudd

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 1 day ago
in Federal Elections, Politics, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 8 Comments

Possum has obtained the polling conducted by UMR for six Queensland unions on the impact of Anna Bligh’s privatisation plans on Labor’s vote. It’s not good news for Bligh, and he suggests, not good news for Kevin Rudd either:

These figures suggest that the Bligh government’s asset sale plan will reduce the ALP’s two-party preferred vote share at the federal election in Queensland by up to about 2%. That is a significant impediment to Labor winning and retaining seats in Rudd’s home state.

His conclusion is interesting:

That level of generic political outlook suggests that not all is lost for Bligh. When combined with asset sales being the dominant issue that is chasing votes away from Labor, with the union movement agitating for the program to be overturned and with Bligh’s program spilling political consequences across into the federal election sphere — the option of a back flip with a triple pike on the asset sale program must be filling the minds of Labor politicians everywhere.

I suspect that the polling doesn’t properly disaggregate the influences of the actual privatisation decision and the perception that Bligh did an almighty turnaround from her election rhetoric, because the choice between the two options is not a particularly salient one given that they’re inter-related. So a backflip would undoubtedly be good for Rudd (or a bit of old-fashioned distancing, as he did with Peter Beattie’s unpopular council amalgamations). But I suspect the jury is still out as to whether Bligh could turn around her fortunes. Given that she’s not the most flexible politician in the world when it comes to changing course, a new Premier might be the answer for Queensland state Labor.

Coalition shows it doesn’t care about equal pay for women

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 2 days ago
in Feminism, Industrial Relations, Policy, Politics and Women
. 71 Comments

Writing in Crikey the other day, Eloise Keating suggested that “if Abbott wants to woo women, he should start with wages”:

Recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show Australian women earned just 82.5% of the average male rate of pay across the country in 2009. On average, a female worker would have earned more in 1985 — and will be $1 million worse off over their lifetimes than their dads, brothers and partners.

That rather understates the size of the problem, because that differential refers to full time earnings, and 57% of women in work were full time, with 43% being part time or casual in 2009. As the recent House of Representatives Standing Committee Report on Equal Pay, Making It Fair, observed:

In August 2007, the average mean earning from all jobs for women was $680 per week (compared to $1022 for male employees) partly reflecting women’s greater participation in part time employment. On a comparison of full time employment earnings, women on average earned $910 per week and men earned $1131 weekly.

The point I’ve been making in my commentary and analysis of the Abbott parental leave plan is that there seems to be a perception that women in the workforce are much better off than they actually are. Otherwise it would be impossible to conclude that income replacement was ‘generous’ or ‘fair’. My argument has been that the Coalition’s approach would further entrench existing inequalities. In that context, it was interesting to note the comments from Eric Abetz on the 7.30 Report tonight. Abetz was responding to a case which starts tomorrow in Fair Work Australia seeking to revalue the work performed (very largely by women) in the community sector. Continue reading ‘Coalition shows it doesn’t care about equal pay for women’

2010: Bye bye Bligh?

Published
by
Mark
3 months ago
in Politics and Queensland
. 32 Comments

Back in August, I had this to say about Anna Bligh’s Labor regime in Queensland:

Anna Bligh’s credibility was one of the few things the ALP had going for it in the March state election. Her opposition to the dictates of ratings agencies was a hallmark message. The announcement after Labor squeaked back in that the fuel subsidy would go, that public sector wages would effectively be frozen and jobs disappeared through efficiency dividends, and, particularly, the plans for the sell off of state assets have seen the trust the electorate had in Bligh collapse.

I also wrote, commenting on her efforts to turn the situation around:

But the public aren’t inclined to credit her for decisive action — because the basis of trust that existed between citizens and their Premier has already dissipated.

At the time, I was met with some scepticism in comments. At the end of the year, I think it’s pretty clear that Bligh’s regime has the smell of death about it. Anyone who doubts that should have a look at Graham Young’s latest polling [links to posts on quant and qual respectively].

Bligh’s woes have been compounded by the departure of her chief of staff, Mike Kaiser. His replacement, Nicole Scurrah, is something of a policy wonk, and it’s difficult to see any semblance of a political strategy from the (shrinking) Bligh camp, beyond toughing it out and proclaiming the virtues of ‘tough decisions’. Hiring Bernie Fraser on 2 and a half grand a day to pacify the unions was a waste of money, and the partial backdown on the privatisations (now to be 50 and 99 year leases instead of full sales) has not stemmed the tide of public and union anger.

The last month or so has seen serious discussions within the party, caucus and unions about removing Bligh. It’s important to recall here that Bligh has alienated many on the left, both in caucus and in left unions, and also in the faction’s rank and file. There’s a host of intra-factional bad will, which is somewhat tangential to the broader consensus forming that removing Bligh is the only way to give Labor any chance at electoral survival, but which has its own effects.

Monday saw reports of moves to convene a special party conference to reverse the privatisation push. This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the machinations going on at the moment, some of which are described in an article by Andrew Crook in today’s Crikey [paywalled]. Continue reading ‘2010: Bye bye Bligh?’

GFC: Usual suspects exonerated

Published
by
Mark
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Economics, Industrial Relations and International
. 24 Comments

[Via SocProf] Remember how all economic ills could be cured by cutting wages and trashing labour protections? How the US economy was a shining beacon of low unemployment and enterprise? The whole Washington Consensus package… Writing in Social Europe Journal, Andrew Watt takes a look at how this rhetoric stands up against the realities of the Global Financial Crisis:

Experts, soothsayers and pundits have been falling over themselves to list the factors that combined to produce the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. (My ha’penny’s worth is here). A partial consensus has emerged on some issues (excessive deregulation of the financial sector, current account imbalances) while debate continues to rage on others (such as the role played by central banks, China, and growing inequality).

But it’s instructive to think for a moment about the factors that are generally, albeit implicitly, agreed not to have caused the crisis. Of course at one level, this might seem a trivial exercise: there is an infinite number. But consider the following selective list of non-culprits: rigid labour markets, out-of-control budget deficits, over-generous welfare states, powerful trade unions, too rapid growth of wages and excessive equality.

Sound familiar? Right, these are the things that, for about a quarter century now, a seemingly invincible phalanx of international institutions, national governments of the right and increasingly also centre-left, media pundits – oh, and I almost forgot, investment-bank chief economists – has assured us are the causes of high unemployment and slow growth. They are the usual suspects.

European economies have now suffered an unprecedented contraction of output. While forecasts are getting more optimistic a sluggish recovery is almost certainly the best that can be hoped for. Unemployment will in any case return to double-digits – way beyond the level when the Lisbon process was inaugurated in 2000 – and on past experience will be slow to fall. And the five sets of key explanatory factors, drummed into policymakers for years, the intellectual underpinning of one reform program after another, explain… nothing. The usual suspects are innocent.

Rundle on the recent history of the left

Published
by
Mark
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Culture, Economics, History, International, Media, Policy, Politics and Sociology
. 38 Comments

As a sequel to my post on The Australian’s series on the left, where I highlighted Guy Rundle’s take, I’m reproducing from today’s Crikey (with permission) his longer sequel to his take beneath the fold. Meantime, the Oz series meanders on, with a contribution from David Hetherington of Per Capita, proposing “a fairer design for markets”.

Update: Quadrant piles on.

Continue reading ‘Rundle on the recent history of the left’

What’s with Anna Bligh?

Published
by
Mark
9 months, 1 week ago
in Government, Policy, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 54 Comments

In the wake of the unnecessary firesale of state assets, the Bligh government has continued down its merry path of trashing Labor policy. Last week we had the refusal to take any action over the charges laid against a 19 year old Cairns woman for “procuring an abortion” by using RU486. Now, it seems, we’re going to see Bligh “muscle up” and take on the public sector unions by reneging on a promise made for pay increases of 4.5%, 4% and 4% over the next three years of enterprise bargaining agreements. The government has already been slashing casual and short term employment across departments and state agencies. Tomorrow’s budget is rumoured to contain cuts to public sector superannuation entitlements and we know that it will place a cap of 2.5% on pay increases.

The state election campaign was a shambolic affair, and it was almost lost. Despite an inept performance, Labor was re-elected primarily because the “jobs” theme and the promise to continue to invest in public infrastructure despite the economic crisis touched a chord with voters. Anna Bligh made much of standing up to credit rating agencies.

So why the turnaround? A couple of factors are at work. The first is Bligh’s inability to set her own direction, adopting rather the path of least resistance recommended by right wing apparatchiks in her office. Let one grumpy voter in a focus group whine about debt, and, well, forget the election promises. Secondly, there’s the misplaced obsession with “strength”, driven by the same advisers. This apparently means tossing Labor policy out the window and pursuing supposedly popular brawls with unions.

This mob have an inability to understand that Labor governments always need to pursue a direction contrary to that favoured by the big end of town to be a success. Talk of ‘reforms’ in the context of short-sighted privatisations is quite risible in this context.

Nor is Bligh apparently capable of learning from the past. Wayne Goss’ government was defeated not by the ‘Koala road’, but in large part because years of managerialist lunacy alienated the public sector vote. Similarly, the slashing of services in outer suburban and regional areas and decisions such as the one to close down the QR workshops in Ipswich in the midst of a recession and deep structural economic change had a lot more to do with the rise of One Nation than some innate Queensland redneckism.

Peter Beattie knew all this.

The irony – or rather, one of the many ironies – is that the government and top bureaucrats have recently been pontificating about the need for public sector spending to create demand in a sluggish economy. That seems – insofar as it means anything – only to apply to bricks and mortar and roads and bridges and to completely eschew people’s livelihoods. All ‘Bligh the Builder’ is paving the way for at the moment is her own defeat.

Corporatism redux?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics, Industrial Relations and Media
. 16 Comments

There’s a bit of chat around the shop today that one of the mooted new stimulus measures the Rudd government might undertake – bringing forward tax cuts and LITO changes for low income earners – could be a way of counterbalancing an anticipated small increase in the minimum wage from the Fair Pay Commission. The suggestion seems to have arisen from the eminently well-connected Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group.

The Australian characterised such a move as a “wage/tax tradeoff” – ala the Accord, and Simon Jackman alludes to “corporatism”. However, there are some significant differences from the Accord – the most important contrasts with the 80s in Australia are that the reach of wages policy is much smaller (because movements in the minimum wage are relevant really only for “award-only” workers who are a smallish minority, and there’s little chance of flow on increases) and it’s less well thought out because it’s more ad hoc and there really isn’t a “social partner” actually representing the low paid to negotiate with, or the quasi-institutional structures for concerted policy formulation which existed in the past.

Continue reading ‘Corporatism redux?’

Jobs, jobs, jobs (if you make car parts)

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics, Energy, Industrial Relations, Markets, Politics and Poverty
. 37 Comments

Following on from one of the conclusions that can be drawn from the thread on Bernard Keane’s critique of the Rudd government’s involvement with bankers – that there’s a growing perception that the long term implications of “emergency” economic decisions haven’t been well considered – I was intrigued to read a report about a car parts supplier in Adelaide:

The Government is “actively considering” a joint submission from the Adelaide exhaust system and shock absorber manufacturer Tenneco and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union that it provide accredited training and also pay the wages of the company’s 600 workers for days the company is forced to halt production.

I think we’re seeing an increasingly corporatist trend in economic policy, and what’s rather intriguing is that the usual voices of neo-liberal orthodoxy aren’t running around the shop demanding “let the free market rip!” (unless I’m missing something). Perhaps that’s because these sort of moves appear widely supported by big business.

If the Tenneco plan goes ahead, it puts some flesh on the government’s rhetoric about the need to preserve skills through a downturn due to the underlying shortages in the labour market. It might also be argued that directing wage subsidies to those already in skilled full time employment is preferable to targeting retraining and labour market measures to those same workers if and when they’re on the dole. Continue reading ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs (if you make car parts)’

What if you held an IR scare and no one came?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Industrial Relations and Media
. 13 Comments

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.

Continue reading ‘What if you held an IR scare and no one came?’

Gillard’s new IR laws and the business response

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 3 months ago
in Industrial Relations
. 91 Comments

Julia Gillard is certainly capable of a sophisticated negotiating strategy, and it’s been interesting to observe that the process of formulating the legislation to implement Forward With Fairness and replace WorkChoices – while managed largely behind closed doors – was accompanied over the year by a fair bit of crowing from business that they’d extracted more concessions than in the two documents released before last year’s election. However, the ALP caucus and the ACTU also belatedly secured more of what they wanted – particularly in last resort arbitration, multi-enterprise bargaining for low paid workers, good faith bargaining and union entry and records inspections rights. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if such changes were always contemplated, and certainly explicit attention to the needs of workers with poor bargaining power spread across a number of work sites (for instance cleaners or employees in light manufacturing) was part of the election policy. What is entirely predictable is the tenor of the business reaction, which you can get a sense of quickly by reading this story from yesterday’s Australian. Unions are back and the sky will fall in! In fact, the points business objects to really just serve to underpin bargaining. There’s an element of balancing equity with efficiency, which has always been part of the IR framework in Australia, but we certainly haven’t “gone back to the future”. In many ways, the legislation could legitimately have gone further in redressing some of the imbalance of power in the bargaining process.

If, although as one would imagine there’s some equivocation going on, the opposition allow the laws to pass substantially unaltered, the business whining will be futile. That in itself may push the opposition into a more negative stance. The passage of the laws through the Senate early next year could get interesting.

Julia Gillard and the unions

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Industrial Relations
. 12 Comments

Earlier in the year, writing in On Line Opinion, I thought that Labor’s “Forward With Fairness” industrial relations policy was best interpreted as an attempt to entrench a new workplace settlement acceptable to all parties – and I still think that’s the Rudd government’s main game. However, it’s now becoming clearer that an element of union bashing is involved – the tired old Third Way game of establishing supposedly electorally popular distance from teh evil labour movement, and also that the “balance” being struck is tilted quite significantly in the direction of employers. Among other things, this explains the dissent in the ranks of unions toward the lacklustre public performance in holding Labor accountable from Sharan Burrow and Jeff Lawrence. It’s also becoming clearer – with the resurrection of demands for “statutory individual contracts” by Julie Bishop as a condition of Senate passage – that the model hasn’t succeeded in producing consensus.

Julia Gillard outlined the results of consultations and more of the shape of the policy which will be embodied in legislation soon to be introduced into Parliament in an address to the National Press Club yesterday. The transcript is here. Commentary is largely focused on the unfair dismissal changes for small business, and there’s a sample of the reaction in a good article summarising union and academic views in The Age. But equally important are the machinations going on in the Industrial Relations Commission over “modern awards”, where employers have been presenting what are basically award-stripping ambit claims, and some odd interventions from Gillard herself [the process was examined in a previous LP post by Senator Rachel Siewert of The Greens] and the rather weak protections for collective bargaining that have been outlined.

It’s all very well to say that Fair Work Australia will be able to make good faith bargaining orders, but if they’re only weakly enforceable, and if there’s no power to arbitrate in the face of, well, bad faith, then it seems somewhat of a fig leaf. The ongoing legal maneouvring Telstra have engaged in, which has just had a setback with employees rejecting a non-union collective agreement in a Commission ordered ballot, is a case in point. Differential pay offers (which have nothing to do with rewarding merit and performance and everything to do with de-unionisation), legal stalling, failure to recognise bargaining agents and “wait them out” negotiating are all weapons in the armoury of management strategy, and it’s far from clear from what Gillard had to say that these tactics couldn’t be employed by business under the new laws.

Continue reading ‘Julia Gillard and the unions’