Howard hurts workers

By Maree O’Halloran

Last week we witnessed the spectacle of the Prime Minister, John Howard, styling himself as the defender of the 29 abattoir workers sacked in Cowra. They were sacked within days of the Federal Government's extreme industrial relations laws coming into effect.

The abattoir wanted to re-hire 20 workers on reduced pay and conditions. If the Prime Minister was disingenuous in his response, the Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews was breathtaking in the spin he attempted to apply. According to Mr Andrews it was the union movement, and more specifically the ACTU, that caused the sackings.

To watch these two feign concern as the real and intended effects of the legislation fell into place was to see leaders completely distanced from the lives of those they govern. The Federal Government's legislation deliberately provides a legal environment which allows employers to make decisions such as the one made by management at the Cowra abattoir.

In the event that the Cowra workers are protected, it will be because of the unions not because of the Federal Government.

Greg Combet and Sharan Burrow from the ACTU and John Robertson from Unions NSW have made strong and powerful representations on behalf of workers and developed, with their affiliates, a strategy to expose the damage the Howard/Costello Government has caused to the social fabric. This strategy involves a number of strands:

1. highlighting the hurt to workers, their families and society as the effects of the new legislation begins to snowball
2. taking the fight to the High Court
3. local community campaigning, particularly in marginal seats
4. continued protest action.

Not surprisingly, people have begun turning to the trade union movement in the face of the Federal Government's industrial relations changes. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data released on March 28 showed a four per cent jump in union membership in the year to August 2005 with an extra 70,000 workers joining. The ABS data also shows that union members earn an average $118 more per week than non-union members.

The Federal Government was in no doubt about what it intended with their so-called "WorkChoices" legislation, despite its rhetoric about productivity and employment. It intended to lower the minimum wage over time, remove job security and promote individual contracts.

In the lead up to last year's workplace relations legislation, Treasurer Peter Costello said: "I can think of no single reform which would boost productivity in the Australian economy to the same extent as real, vigorous industrial relations reform" (The Australian, March 24).

He made this statement in the face of Treasury's analysis that workplace reforms would deliver smaller wage rises for low income earners and cut productivity growth. The same analysis showed that investment in education and capital equipment would increase productivity growth.

It also appears that the Government would like to go further. Finance Minister Nick Minchin was reported during a secret address to the HR Nicholls Society apologising to his audience that the new laws did not go further. Minchin said: "This is evolution, not revolution, and there is still a long way to go..." and "Poll after poll demonstrated that the Australian people don't agree at all with anything we're doing on this -- we have minority support for what we are doing." (ACTU media release, March 8).

Australia's biggest businesses, many of which are behind the HR Nicholls Society, are driving the Coalition to make changes which they know are not supported and which they know will hurt workers and their families.

One in five Coalition voters are ready to change their vote because of the Federal Government's industrial relations changes (Newspoll in The Australian, March 31). The issue is a vote-changer but the Opposition is so wracked with internal dissension that it is failing to capitalise on the issue. As John Robertson from Unions NSW said: "The message for Labor is that it needs to lift its game, ensuring that people's rights are protected." (The Australian, March 31).

In the absence of effective opposition from Labor, the union movement's campaign must focus on gaining sufficient momentum that every political party will be held to account for its industrial relations policies.

As the Federal Government's industrial relations changes wreak havoc, Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop gave her support to the notion of vouchers across the board in education (The Australian, March 21). If brought to fruition, this policy would hurt children in public schools across Australia. While, Shadow Minister Jenny Macklin rejected the notion, the ALP still appears intent on revisionism with respect to its 2004 Federal Education Policy. Craig Emerson, a prominent ALP backbencher, has called for funding distinctions between public and private schools to be abandoned (The Age, March 24). This notion must be rejected as it jettisons the ideal of public education for the common good and, in Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul's words, the essential role public education plays "in making us a civilised democracy".

Federation supports the redistribution of funds from private schools to public schools. ALP policy in 2004 merely redistributed funding within the private pool. Emerson's call for an additional $2.5 billion a year in funding would be a welcome and needed additional funding for public schools.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the Federation's successful occupational health and safety prosecution. The Department of Education and Training was found guilty of breaches at Dover Heights High School following the violent incidents against staff and students by a student (see story page 3).

Finally, on April 5, NSW Upper House began to debate a bill to delay the mandatory introduction of the Computer Skills Assessment Test in 2006. Thank you to those members who lobbied MPs and to the Greens who were due to move the Bill.

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April 2006 contents