Thank you tfk for your comment that you left regarding my last post (Democrazy In Australia). It raises a few interesting points about AWAs which I wasn't going to get into, but you have inspired me to tackle them. Your comment was:
Economics 101Firstly, I don't recall mentioning anywhere in my blog post anything at all about an IR system being able to prevent a serious international downturn. The two don't even have a causal relationship, so it is impossible, much in the same way that a Federal Government can't dictate interest rate policy to the RBA...
No IR system will prevent a serious international downturn. You can have an IR system that is flexible enough to moderate wage rises - or even allow for wage cuts - or an inflexible one in which you lose your job entirely.
I agree with you that there were inherent inflexibilities in the pre-AWA IR system. For a start, Unfair Dismissal laws could be a great burden to business. It was next to impossible to fire someone for genuine reasons, and this led to much trouble. Larger companies were often forced to hide their inept/lazy/unproductive/dishonest/militant employees in a "safe" role somewhere out of the way so they couldn't continue to cause problems. Smaller companies were simply in huge trouble, because they had nowhere to hide said employees, and often couldn't afford to put on more staff.
Further to this, the Collective Bargaining structure of the unions quite often meant that there would be wages blowouts as sectors followed each other - "oh the so-and-so workers got a 7% pay rise - we want that too". Some unions were waaaay too powerful - I lost count of the number of times that the docks were used to hold Australia to ransom as the unions continued to reach their hands way too far into the owners' pockets. Many industries were losing their competitive advantage as a result of impractical, self-serving and irresponsible union thuggery and bloody-mindedness.
In my humble opinion, everything in life should be about balance. This holds true also for Industrial Relations in this country. There have been times when the unions have held way too much power, and there have been times when the owners of capital have held way too much power. It is my considered opinion that AWAs are the thin end of the wedge that will drive the Australian workforce into a new age of slavery.
In the industry I work in (Electrical Engineering), like in most professional sectors, there is no union representation. I have never belonged to a union, and most probably never will. From my first day out of university, my pay and conditions have always been individually negotiated between myself and my employer, so I guess you could say that I have always been on AWAs, even a decade and a half before they existed as a structured IR system.
In the early years of your employment life, this usually means you get taken advantage of because you don't have a clear understanding of your worth, have imperfect communication skills, and/or lack the confidence to engage in dialogue with your employer. This is a major problem with AWAs and individual bargaining.
It is an even greater problem for those people who will never have the skills required to engage their employers and negotiate pay and conditions for themselves. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these people are either working in low skilled industries or industries where they have very little bargaining power for one reason or another. This small bargaining power also manifests itself in so-called "popular" industries, where the supply of workers far outstrips the demand. As a result, the divide between the haves and the have-nots will manifest itself in ever greater imbalances within the employment landscape.
As the broader economic environment plays out the standard business cycle oscillations, along with non-cyclical factors such as the anticipated dampening of demand from India and China, the continued weakness of the American dollar, and the much-anticipated though oft unspoken point of Peak Oil world oil production, there will be greater and greater pressure placed on corporations (especially those who are responsible to shareholders to continue to deliver profit above all other considerations).
Now, I've been searching for a long while, and I've yet to find a publicly listed corporation that actually gives a wet slap about its employees, about its customers, or about inconvenient things such as a social conscience or the environmental impact of unsustainable and polluting practices, unless it has a nett positive effect on the bottom line profit figures. So, with greater economic strain, the companies will go on a huge raping, murdering and pillaging spree across the Australian employment landscape, and AWAs will provide them with the almost limitless power to do as they please.
Government won't intervene, because they want big business to continue to provide all of those good things to society that they've been delivering for decades - mass produced cars, cheap TVs, and all the panoply of sparkly glittering things that keep the electorate docile enough to keep chasing the carrot on the stick instead of asking the important and difficult questions of their leaders that need to be asked.
Unions, once too powerful for their own good but now just a shadow of their former glory, will have no legislatively protected or endorsed power whatsoever, and so, with a whimper, the Australian labour force will bite down on the wooden coathanger and take it like a man...
Corporations and other capitalist entities have had well in advance of 50 years to develop a social conscience, to develop a responsible and accountable approach towards their impact on society and the environment, and they've most certainly not succeeded unless they've been dragged kicking and screaming through the courts and forced to do it. To assume that they will "do the right thing" by the Australian workers, when the temptation and opportunity are there to screw them in favour of greater profit margins, is very much a naive skip down the yellow brick road.
So, tfk, I am sorry, but I cannot agree with you that AWAs provide greater flexibility than the old IR system, despite the fact that this is the oft-touted argument for AWAs. It has little to do with flexibility, and a lot more to do with destruction of the balance between worker and capital owner, greatly in favour of the capital owner. I am sure that a struggling father of 3 kids, forced to give up his penalty rates, forced to work longer hours to make up for the lower wages, hardly seeing the kids grow up, missing all of those precious moments that are the icing on life's cake, putting almost unbearable strain on the family relationships, would love to talk to you about flexibility. Sure, more flexibility for the employer, no flexibility for the worker.
In this current unprecedented economic boom, with unemployment at near-record lows, the average worker who feels unduly pressured by the bite of AWAs into their pay and conditions has the "flexibility" to find another job. When the economic purse strings are tightened during tougher times, this door too will be closed, and the worker will be left with little or no recourse.
By no means am I advocating a return to the days of high-power unions running roughshod over business, ultimately harming the workers that they are supposed to be representing, and holding Australian businesses and consumers to ransom in the process. My fear is that this may happen if Labor wins the election without having to rely on at least a couple of sane voices in the Senate keeping them in check.
What I will say is that AWAs strip away any possible safety net that the average Australian worker has, leaving them open to a return to the Industrial Revolution days of sweat shops, terrible working conditions, lousy pay, and a subjugated underclass. Which, I guess, is exactly what the Beige Howards of this world would love, since big business would continue to piss in their pockets for handing it all to them on a silver platter.
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