This article from Crikey shows how shallow is the evidence upon which the Abbott government will beat up on workers and their incomes and living conditions by attacking their unions. At Crikey we’ve often noted how the Fair Work Act, which we were told would undermine workplace productivity, has resulted in a rise in labour productivity and low wages growth, when we were told it would lead to a wages breakout. How about industrial disputation? The FWA was bad for industrial disputes, we were told, because it would give unions an unprecedented right to interfere with matters that were rightly management prerogative. The fair-work laws extended the right to strike because they extended the right of unions to take strike action over contracting and outsourcing disputes, complained Peter Anderson of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2011. In fact, as Crikey showed a couple of years ago, the FWA merely restored the status quo ante of Peter Reith’sWorkplace Relations Act before the 2004 Wesfarmers case, but dont lets fixate on detail. There were plenty of other claims about the impact of the FWA on industrial disputation. It had unleashed an adversarial culture which has resulted in a rising number of disputes and unreasonable claims by some unions, according to theBusiness Councils Jennifer Westacott in December 2011. Australian Industry Group industrial relations managerStephen Smith in March 2012 said the level of industrial disputation hasnt been this bad for quite a few years now, not since 2007, and claimed workplace relations had become more adversarial as a result of an expansion of the matters that would now be bargained upon under the FWA. [N]ew union powers in the Fair Work Act have had a damaging economic impact, Anderson said in late 2011. Industrial disputes were a sign that Australia is returning to a culture of strike first, talk later, he said. The Fair Work Act has extended workers’ right to strike, contrary to commitments by the Labor Party in opposition in 2007, he argued in March 2012. Then there was Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox, cited in December 2012 telling The Australian that, in the journalists words, the further increase in working days lost highlighted the need for the government to change the laws to more tightly define the issues that can be the subject of bargaining claims. Provisions which have no place in a modern workplace relations system need to once again be outlawed, such as restrictions on the engagement of contractors and labour hire, Willox said. The Australian itself lamented in September 2012 that the increase in working days lost to industrial disputes and the impact of restrictive labour market policies on Australias economic competitiveness demand closer scrutiny of the effectiveness of the Gillard governments Fair Work system. How vindicated ACCI, and the Business Council, and AIG, and The Australian must feel after yesterdays industrial disputes figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which allow us to compare 2013 with previous years and see how much time was being lost due to disputes. This is average across the year of quarterly days lost per 100,000 workers, the best guide to the overall level of industrial turmoil, and look at the havoc that the FWA wreaked in workplaces across the nation in 2013 (see graphic for the table referred to). Last year was a real bloodbath, huh? Thank goodness were having a Productivity Commission inquiry into all this. Last year had the second-lowest average level of days lost since the ABS began collecting data; the lowest was 2007, when unions kept a low profile to avoid doing anything to derail Labors chances of victory (and quite what AIGs chap meant when he said disputation hasnt been this bad for quite a few years now not since 2007 is anyones guess). Compared to even the Howard era, industrial disputes are at a remarkably low level. Why? A soft labour market has undermined both wages growth and the level of industrial disputes, and contrary to the claims of business, the FWA has done nothing to prevent those market outcomes. Where are all those unions exploiting their unprecedented rights by bringing on disputes about management prerogatives? Wheres the more adversarial industrial relations climate created by Labor? In the same place as the lost productivity and the wages explosion, in the minds of business groups and their cheerleaders.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 05:01:16 +0000
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