This issue is something I’d planned to write about but have lacked time to do so. Some very important changes to the legal regulation of working conditions are being made in this country largely beneath the radar of media scrutiny - outside the business press. So I’m happy to post this contribution from Greens Senator for Western Australia, Rachel Siewert. - MB
Senator Rachel Siewert is the Australian Greens spokesperson on Industrial Relations.
Massive upheaval is occurring to Australia’s standard employment conditions and minimum wages, with little to no understanding or public attention.
The ‘award modernisation’ process currently underway in the AIRC, following a request from the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, will impact on all Australian workers … either directly through loss of conditions or indirectly through lowering the base from which agreements can be made.
While the Rudd Government likes to compare its IR policy with Work Choices (…so it can say things are slightly better than they might have been), a better way of evaluating their policy is to look at the industrial relations system that existed in Australia before the aberration of Work Choices. On this test the Government is failing to provide adequate protection for workers.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Senator Rachel Siewert: Award modernisation - what’s going on?’
Last year I wrote that Dr. Mohamed Haneef was an Australian Dreyfus. This year, Turkish trade unionist Meryem Özsögüt is a Turkish Mohamed Haneef.
Ms. Özsögut, a member of the management board of a Turkish public sector union, has been detained for six months allegedly in connection with “being a member of a terrorist organisation” and “for making propaganda in favour of the terrorist organisation”.
More on Ms. Ozsogut’s detention can be read here. A petition to request her release can be signed here.
P.S. The PSI, to which I’ve linked, is an international federation of public sector unions whose Australian affiliates include the Community & Public Sector Union, the Australian Services Union and the Communication, Electrical & Plumbing Union.
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I’ve often said that the best source for public opinion research around is the Australian Election Study. Some preliminary data has been released [link to pdf] by researchers Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark, presented in graphical form. The purpose of the paper is to enable assessments of changes in public opinion over time, with some of the questions forming a time series going back to 1969. I’ve only had a cursory look at the data, but one thing I wanted to focus on was the data from the 2007 election, particularly as it relates to issue importance and party advantage on particular issues. Basically, this is much better quality data than anything you’d get from Newspoll.
A detailed analysis isn’t possible in the absence of the raw data which would enable regressions and cross-tabs, but there are some interesting patterns in the data that are presented. The first point to make, one that’s made in the current political context ably by Possum Comitatus, is that leadership is much less important to voting intention than is usually claimed in the media. Since there have been long term declines in partisanship and therefore more votes up for grabs in any particular electoral cycle, the whole concept of party “ownership” of issues becomes much more important - hence all the attention focused last year on “economic management”. I’ve previously pointed out that the question in Newspoll on that measure was actually the wrong one - at least insofar as 2007 goes - because Labor polling found that “economic management for working families” was much more important, and it’s there that their advantage lay (as the opposition now knows well, because that’s where all their attack is focused). In this context, it’s also very significant to observe the finding that a majority of voters don’t believe anything the government does has much impact on the economy - what we might term the “globalisation effect” - something very poorly understood by political commentators, I’d suggest.
Last year, industrial relations jumped from 2% of respondents nominating it as the most important economic issue in 2004 to 16% and top position. Labor enjoyed a big advantage over the Coalition - 52 to 32, intriguingly reversing a Coalition lead (when the issue was much less important) in 2004 of 37 to 27. Continue reading ‘Issues and the 2007 election’
There are a few articles around the place today about the ever-growing remuneration of University Vice-Chancellors, sparked I suspect by the revelations last week of former UQ VC John Hay’s record-breaking package:
University of Queensland Vice Chancellor John Hay earned $1.99 million last year, double his 2006 salary of $1.05 million.
Mr Hay’s salary was the largest across the sector.
It wasn’t that long ago - at UQ - that Deans were elected (I voted in a couple of Arts Faculty Board ballots as a student rep), that being head of department was a part-time gig with an honorarium on top of normal salary, and that there were firewalls between academic decision making and decisions about their resources implications. John Hay didn’t change all that, because it had begun to change already before he got there, but he transformed what remained of the collegial decision making structures at UQ - which had been democratised during the late 1960s and 1970s - into the very model of managerialism. So he’s left with his managerial reward.
Continue reading ‘Vice-chancellors strike it rich’
While I’m quite a fan of allohistory, I rarely engage in it because (a) I’m not very good at it and (b) it’s rather self-indulgent. But like most indulgences, it’s a bit of harmless fun and it won’t make you go blind.
So here goes: This letter in today’s Oz alerted me to the intriguing possibility that a bit of judicial activism by the High Court over WorkChoices might have been enough to save the Howard government from electoral oblivion.
While the High Court’s 2006 judgement on WorkChoices makes an unassailable case for the legal correctness of upholding the legislation, let’s pretend things were different. If the High Court judges had gone all activist and concocted a convoluted Constitutional argument to strike down WorkChoices, then the result of the 2007 election might have been very different.
Continue reading ‘Would judicial activism have saved the Howard government?’
Two papers released today probably won’t be the proverbial barbeque stoppers of Howardian memory on work/life balance, but they’re raising very interesting issues and questions which have the potential to reframe debates of central importance to, well, all of us. The Productivity Commission’s Issues Paper on Parental Support has now been released. It’s a very good exercise in recognising the differential impacts of decision making on people with different circumstances and basing policy on rethinking its objectives. There’s also an extremely useful appendix summarising what’s known about the scope and impact of policy in this area in Australia and overseas. It’s certainly true to say that Australia is one of the few major developed nations not to have in place any overall framework for parental support, but that doesn’t mean we should rush to formulate policy on the run, but rather that we have the chance to get it right. The Commission is inviting submissions in response to the paper, and I’m also glad to see that it’s welcoming individual submissions on personal experiences of time taken out of work for parental reasons.
It’s also worth observing that the PC provides data which demonstrate that access to paid parental leave is currently a privilege largely enjoyed by full time employees and those employees in higher income brackets. It ought not to be seen as a “bonus” but rather as a right that enhances and underpins equitable access to employment and career progression and job satisfaction, and should thus be guarenteed to all. The Commission also notes the positive labour market effects and productivity gains for employers which could flow from a broader extension of paid parental leave.
Having worked in the area of advising corporations on staff retention and equity issues myself, I’m well aware that one of the options often taken by professional or skilled parents (and particularly women) - part time work - has often been something which is viewed as an inconvenience to employers (although in the case of less skilled workers, it’s lauded as necessary flexibility). Continue reading ‘Parental leave, part time work and policy’
I don’t think you can sing along as you could to Paul’s post on yesterday’s anniversary, but my thoughts on the enduring legacy of the Waterfront dispute are in my column at New Matilda today.
It’s ten years yesterday since the commencement of the waterfront dispute.
As one of a number of Brisbane university staff and students who walked several kilometres in the rain in support of the workers at the Port of Brisbane, I’d like to commemorate the occasion by linking to a great song, written by the late, great Stan Rogers, and performed here by Makem & Clancy, about a bunch of Canadian maritime workers who wouldn’t just let management cut them, and their ship, adrift for the sake of profits. Up the workers!
1968 was a very eventful year, and we’re seeing a number of anniversaries which - hopefully - stimulate further reflection on some of the key personalities, cultural and political events four decades down the track. Friday the 4th of April was the fortieth anniversary of the death of Dr Martin Luther King.
There are a number of such reflections around in the blogosphere this weekend. Andrew Bartlett provides a number of valuable links, including one to Joseph Palermo at The Huffington Post who makes an interesting and important point about the difference in perceptions about King before and after his death:
Contrary to mainstream belief today, while King was alive he was never widely heralded in the media as a “savior” or a “great leader.” He was just as often denounced as a “polarizing” figure and his work was often denigrated in racist terms. As was the case with Robert F. Kennedy, the love affair with MLK only took off long after he had become a kind of martyr.
King had actually found himself at something of a crossroads in 1968 - most of the civil rights the movement had been seeking had been embodied in law - largely through LBJ’s decision to force them through a mainly reticent if not unwilling Congress. Continue reading ‘Martin Luther King - the legacy’
Brendan Nelson’s been at one of the regular talkfests organised by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute - the “New Agenda for Prosperity Conference” - having his say on industrial relations.
The day after Julia Gillard buried AWAs (or did she?), Dr Nelson’s taken time out from his compassionate crusade to resurrect the Coalition’s support for statutory individual workplace agreements:
The proposition is for an AWA with a different name and a better safety net. “The Coalition has heard the message from the electorate about AWAs and we no longer support them,” he said.
“Having said that, it is important for Australians to understand that we continue to support individual statutory agreements with a fair no-disadvantage test.”
Nelson, meet Labor trap.
Given that even mining companies were being quoted in the Fin Review yesterday as being “relaxed” about the absence of individual statutory agreements after 2009, this can only be about pure ideology. Which is, of course, what got Howard into so much trouble. The Coalition’s inability to paper over the cracks of the Howardian legacy just ensured Labor gets to run the scare campaign it wants to run at the next election.
This folly was perhaps predictable. What’s more interesting is one of the other themes from Nelson’s speech The Australian decided to highlight in advance of its delivery. Continue reading ‘Tangled up in blue’
Yesterday, the House of Reps passed the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008 without a division and the Senate committee released its report into the legislation. Although from my point of view, it’s fantastic that WorkChoices is being buried, the way it’s being done raises important questions about the government’s commitment to consultation and the integrity of the legislative process as well as important questions about the relationship between the labour movement and the Labor party. I look at all this in my column in today’s New Matilda.
…well, design an IR system that you think is simple and politically feasible. That’s what I’ve had a go at sketching out over at On Line Opinion, as part of their alternative 2020 summit feature. Note that I’m not putting forward what I would like to see in an ideal world, but something I think is possible in this one and might secure some broad agreement.
Compare and contrast, as they say, Kevin Rudd in PNG building bridges and restoring relationships and John Howard in Washington ranting about “Islamic fascism” and dwelling on the past.
It’s the exact same dynamic as in the election - Rudd accentuating the positive and looking to the future, and Howard mired in negativity and defending his “achievements”. Still, I thought it was neat that both were overseas at the same time - it really does shine an interesting light on their differences.
Macquarie University researchers Ben Spies-Butcher and Shaun Wilson have released results of a study they’ve done into the results of last year’s election. They’re interested in whether a large third party campaign (specifically the Your Rights At Work effort directed by the ACTU and its affiliates) influenced the election. This is what they got up to:
We develop a linear regression model based on the seat-by-seat results, and the swing against the Howard Government (two party preferred) recorded in each. This approach uses statistical correlation to test whether there is a relationship between particular features of a seat (for example, its age composition) and the anti-government swing recorded in that seat. A particular advantage of this type of model is that it can separate out the effects of different factors.
Continue reading ‘Explaining the swing’
Somewhat predictably, while federal parliamentarians are (grudgingly) exercising voluntary pay restraint, the top end of town has totally rejected any notion that business execs should follow suit. Nor does Professor Ian Harper, chair of the Fair Pay Commission, appear to believe that we’re all in the war on inflation together, pocketing a nifty pay rise from $81,445 to $119,830 for his part time job. The good prof does appear to believe, however, going by everything he’s been saying recently, that low paid workers should make sacrifices to help slay the inflationary dragon.
I don’t think this is either necessary or fair, and I look at some alternative ideas in my column for New Matilda today.
Update: Martin Leet also writes about this issue at Brisbane Line, pointing out the fact that monetary policy is simultaneously a sledgehammer and seemingly ineffectual, and observing:
Successive governments, of both political persuasions, have eroded a key policy instrument they could have been used to bring the inflationary problem under control: a centralised wage system. Now, politicians are reduced to ‘asking’ for wage restraint, and to ‘setting an example’.
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