Who's Afraid of Industrial "Reform"?

As the Australian Federal election starts to loom large on the horizon of most Australians' political consciousness, and as opinion polls continue to suggest that the Labor Opposition are in with a real chance of breaking the Howard Government's decade-long stranglehold on power, industrial relations is shaping up as one of the key battlegrounds for the hearts and minds of the voting public.

In some respects, the pitches thrown at voters by both sides are somewhat predictable. The Howard Government continues to trot out the tired old whipping horse of secretive "union power" should the ALP win the next election; the ALP continue to pose as the party that champions decency and fairness in the employment relationship. Yet, beneath these familiar masks lurk some subtleties that may have escaped most people's attention. For in reality this is not a battle between parties with opposing perspectives on industrial relations, but a contest to determine who can best massage their message and thereby convince the public of their right to electoral support.

In part, this is played out in the overt messages that are issued by both the Coalition and the ALP. The Coalition continue to trumpet their record as "economic managers", pointing to Australia's "record low" unemployment figures as proof of the veracity of Coalition industrial policy, and in particular, the so-called "Workchoices" changes to industrial relations legislation. The ALP responds by arguing that the Howard Government have simply benefited from "reforms" instituted by the Hawke/Keating Labor Governments, while at the same time strongly playing up the social injustice implications of the Government's industrial policy.

But this posturing only hides the less attractive reality. The "official" unemployment figures are highly suspect, both methodologically and qualitatively. Aside from the fact that the "unemployment" rate only counts those who are formally registered with the Government's privatised "Jobs Network" (and many tens of thousands of people are not so registered, for a variety of reasons), the integrity of the figure suffers from rules such as the stipulation that an "employed" person is defined as someone who has an hour or more of paid employment per week. So if you are unfortunate enough to suffer from irregular or highly variable hours of work, you are counted as gainfully "employed"! The truth is that the real unemployment / underemployment rate in Australia is at least double the "official" (and supposedly "record low") rate. But this is the kind of duplicity that is to be expected from a Government who have made an artform out of dissembling, distorting, obfuscating, and downright dishonesty.

For the ALP's part, it is essentially attempting to have its cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, it argues that it is as economically "competent" (if not more so) than the Government, citing the aforementioned "reforms" under previous Federal Labor governments. On the other hand, it portrays itself as the friend of the working person / self-employed person / skilled tradesperson against the "big end of town"; the friend of the "battler" and the "aspirational class". This is a decidedly dishonest strategy, replete as it is with a sad combination of "me-too" politics and phoney class identification. The "reforms" of the Hawke/Keating Governments opened the door for the lamentable erosion of citizens' capacity to direct their own industrial / financial future that has been entrenched by the policies of the Howard Government; and even as it has been turning its back on its social-democratic foundations and mindlessly embracing neo-liberal economic orthodoxies, the ALP has been posturing as the party of social equality and conscience.

And it is this essential artificiality on both sides of politics that has underscored some of the recent manoeuvrings on industrial relations. Stung by a highly effective union campaign against the "Workchoices" legislation (an effectiveness derived in large part from the fact that the campaign drew on the real experiences of people victimised by the "reforms"), the Howard Government has dropped the "Workchoices brand", recruited the employers federations (isn't it funny how they're never called "bosses unions"?) to fund a multi-million dollar pro-Workchoices ad campaign, and have seized on the fact that the union movement has a campaign strategy for the forthcoming election to hysterically suggest an ALP-union conspiracy. Predictably, the ALP have attempted to destroy the claim of union control by assuring employers that unions will have neither a free rein nor a guaranteed future should the ALP win power, and has bent over backwards to water down its initially robust policy response to "Workchoices" as a sop to the powerful employer federations (no hint of a Coalition-business conspiracy, though).

But perhaps one of the most sweeping - and yet unnoticed, or at least, uncommented upon - aspects of the ALP's industrial policy has been its proposal to effectively make the governance of industrial relations an arm of the public service. It proposes doing this in two ways: by making the oversight of industrial relations the province of a "one-stop shop" entity called "Fair Work Australia"; and by abolishing the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). True, the AIRC has effectively been reduced to a shadow of its former self under "Workchoices", and its substantive functions outsourced to creatures of the Howard Government such as the Australian Fair Pay Commission and the Office of the Employment Advocate; but the proposed abolition of the Commission represents the effective abandonment of a framework that has made Australia’s IR system unique in the industrialised world.

As an independent judiciary, the AIRC has been the sole instrumentality capable of holding both capital and labour to account, restraining the excesses of both mindless union militancy and callous libertarian capitalism. The net result has been an economic prosperity and social cohesiveness the envy of the rest of the world, built largely on Keynesian principles of judicious intervention in the economy, and achieved without the appalling inequalities that characterise the “boom” economies of post-Thatcherite Britain and post-Reaganomics America.

That the Coalition should wish to see the Commission eviscerated is hardly surprising, given the dominance of neo-liberal ideologues on the conservative side of politics. That this feat will be enacted by the ALP should it win power not only indicates a similar neo-liberal ascendancy in what passes for progressive politics in Australia, it also points to a shockingly one-dimensional understanding of economics. In other words, it’s not actually about the economy - that is, the totality of the relationship between business, finance, employment, human dignity, bargaining power and social equity - it’s actually about convincing the electorate who can secure the biggest budget surpluses, maintain the lowest interest rates, and provide the biggest tax cuts.

Moreover, the name of the entity which the ALP propose will take over the role of the AIRC not only smacks of the jingoism for which the present Federal Government is notorious, given the politicisation of the public service under that selfsame government, it produces the alarming prospect that the entity itself will simply be a tool of party politics. There are already sufficient examples of this under the Howard Government for the potential loss of an independent AIRC to be truly worrying. Equally importantly, it makes a mockery of the rubric under which these “reforms” have been proposed: fair for all, not free for all.

Without an independent judiciary, industrial relations in Australia will become a free-for-all. And, as usual, the ones to suffer will be the most helpless: those with the least bargaining power; those without skills or only minimal skills; those stuck in the round of casualised work, unemployment, and underemployment. The Australian economy - that is, the nexus between human dignity and bargaining power in the workplace - is already on shaky ground; the “reforms” proposed by the ALP - and the further "reforms" that will almost certainly be implemented by the Coalition should they win the next election - may well cut the ground out from under working Australians completely and irrevocably.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: A poll is when people come to their census. (Anonymous)