More power to Australia's bosses

Two weeks ago Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews stood at the doors to Parliament House in Canberra and declared Monday, March 27, a historic day for Australia.

It was the day John Howard's new industrial relations system, called Workchoices, came into force after a personal crusade that tracked the Prime Minister's 32-year career in politics, and was finally achieved with control over both Houses of Parliament and his stature as the nation's second-longest serving leader, with a retirement date entirely at his discretion.

Andrews said the changes introduced with Workchoices, were significant. "But they are also fair changes."

The following day, at the Melbourne plant of multinational cable-maker Triangle Cables, 58-year-old Richard Maciejewski was called into the managing director's office and handed a letter saying his services were no longer required and "consequently your employment is terminated".

Maciejewski, one of eight workers sacked by Triangle that day, told ABC radio, "He's been waiting for the industrial relations changes to come into law and he's taken action on it there. There's absolutely no doubt about it."

Triangle Cables was merely the vanguard of a spate of similar sackings around the country. Two apprentices in Adelaide, a housekeeper in Queensland's Sunshine Coast sacked from a full-time job and re-hired as a lower-paid casual, two photo-lab workers told to leave at their end of their shift in Sydney, a catering manager laid off in Tasmania after 10 years' service, and 29 abattoir workers sacked in Cowra, New South Wales, and offered their jobs back at up to A$180 ($215) a week less.

Andrews conceded that the new laws gave bosses employing about 4 million Australians almost unqualified power to rid themselves of workers for any reason they chose. "Sometimes people's personalities clash," he said.

The reach of Howard's brave new industrial world stretches far further than the loss of protection from unfair dismissal by more than 1 million small businesses.

It changes the process of setting minimum wages and conditions, settling disputes, managing strikes and negotiating employment contracts, it severely restricts the rights and power of unions, and it reduces minimum conditions to just five, eliminating such previously untouchable rights as overtime, shift allowances, redundancy pay and standard hours of work (see box).

For unions, Labor and other opposition parties, and church and social organisations, Workchoices is anathema. For business and industry, especially small business operators who have long chafed at the cost of industrial law and fumed at unfair dismissal provisions under which it became enormously expensive and time-consuming to sack even the most inefficient and dishonest of employees, the new legislation is industrial manna.

At least for the moment. Widespread legal uncertainty remains about many of its provisions, and a series of cases to test its bounds is almost a certainty. And while a future recession may lead to a labour surplus, at present skilled and experienced workers are relatively hard to come by, and the law so complex and confusing that many small businesses may find it easier to continue with the award and collective bargaining systems they know and understand.

Nor have the more sinister possibilities been overlooked: the potential for disgruntled workers, or angry sacked employees, to exact revenge through various forms of sabotage.

The immediate impact of Workchoices has been to increase suspicion and insecurity, and to open Australia's economy to potential new divisions.

The law's opponents claim it will destroy all the benefits, social cohesion and financial security built up by more than a century of union struggle. Its supporters believe it will increase productivity and create more jobs. BOTH sides agree the full implications will not emerge for months. Howard says people will look back and ask what all the fuss was about. Labor leader Kim Beazley warns, "This is like an infestation of termites. We're going to see workers' rights gradually crumbled away".

Either way, Workchoices has come as a severe jolt to a workforce that has been one of the most protected and privileged in the world. Almost all the old certainties have gone.

At Cowra, a country town west of Sydney best known as the site of a World War II massacre of Japanese prisoners trying a mass breakout, the worst fears erupted when the local meatworks sacked 29 workers. It then offered 20 their jobs back at up to A$180 a week less. There was a special note to the tremors. The Australian labour movement and the Labor party were born from the often violent struggles of 19th-century pastoral workers. Battles between unions and farmers over live sheep and Kiwi shearers were among the most bitter of the past two decades.

And in 1985, court action against picketing of a small abattoir at Mudginberri, in the Northern Territory, broke the power of the meatworkers' union and cemented secondary boycott sanctions in the employers' armoury.

Cowra was a test of Howard's new laws, which forbid companies sacking workers with the intention of hiring them back under lower wages and conditions. The abattoir recanted and withdrew the termination notices - but legal doubts remain, especially over the potential for the owner to claim "operational reasons" for his action.

Andrews said that whether or not a law had been breached was ultimately a decision for a court or tribunal to decide. With nurses in Queensland and aged care workers in Victoria claiming similar misuse of the new laws, industrial lawyers believe test cases will be needed. A CONSTITUTIONAL battle is already under way. The High Court is due next month to hear a challenge by NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia to Howard's use of Canberra's power to govern corporate law to replace state industrial laws with a federal system.

The Labor states deeply resent the loss of their constitutional rights - which have always been staunchly defended - as much as Howard's new industrial package.

Traditional Howard supporters share their concern. Even the conservative H.R. Nicholls Society - whose founders included Treasurer Peter Costello and which was described by former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke as a band of "political troglodytes and economic lunatics" - is worried. President Ray Evans likened the usurpation of States' rights to Stalinism, telling ABC radio, "It's rather like going back to the old Soviet system of command and control".

Politically, the new laws could backfire on Howard. Opinion polls show that scandal, the Iraq war and industrial relations have hurt the Government and pushed Labor to a fragile fore.

Polling by Newspoll for the Australian reported most voters believed the new laws would harm the economy, although they were divided on the impact on job creation.

Significantly, most voters thought Labor would better handle industrial relations, along with the other key concerns of health, education, welfare and social issues.

But Howard's survival has depended on opportunism and luck as much as good management, and that seems to be holding: Labour remains ill-led and riven by in-fighting that Newspoll suggests will outweigh Howard's vulnerability and keep the Coalition in power.

If that holds true at next year's election, Australia will have no chance of seeing Beazley keep his promise of tearing the laws in two. Howard's way would be here to stay.

The Law

* Minimum conditions: Before Howard, the exclusive preserve of the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC). Now, five minimum conditions: the legal minimum hourly wage, four weeks annual leave, 10 days sick leave, unpaid parental leave, a 38-hour week. No requirement for overtime, weekend or night rates, redundancy pay, standard hours of work, annual leave loading or skill-based wage levels.

* Minimum wage: Before, set by the IRC after input from unions and bosses. Now, to be set by a new Fair Pay Commission of four part-time Government appointees.

* Awards: Before, negotiated by unions with alternative workplace or individual contracts, with individual deals required to provide above-award conditions. Now, employers can force workers to accept individual contracts requiring only minimum pay and conditions. Workers have no right to insist on an award.

* Unfair dismissal: Before, dismissals had to be proved fair, and employers had to consult workers if 15 or more workers were retrenched. Now, businesses with fewer than 100 employees are exempt from unfair dismissal actions, with no redundancies for workplaces of fewer than 15. Also exempt from unfair dismissal laws are workers sacked for "operational reasons", and seasonal and casual workers.

* Unions: Before, employees had the right to union-negotiated awards. Unions had the legal right to enter workplaces to check on conditions. Now, unions have no right to bargain collectively. Employers can insist on individual contracts even if workers accept a union-negotiated deal. Provisions guaranteeing union access to workplaces are banned from collective agreements. Unions must give 24 hours' notice, with reasons an employer may reject, before entering a workplace. Unions are not allowed in workplaces where employees work only under individual contracts.

* Strikes: Before, wide but not unrestrained right to strike. Now, strikes allowed only after "genuine attempts" to reach settlement and compulsory secret ballots, with legally protected strikes able to be stopped on employer application to the IRC or at the direction of the federal Workplace Relations Minister.

* Industrial arbitration: Before, IRC set minimum wages and conditions, and had the power to settle strikes. Now, the IRC has no power to set minimum wages or arbitrate disputes, although it can mediate and suspend strikes. It can also hear unfair dismissal cases involving businesses with more than 100 employees.

* State awards. Before, States ran their own industrial systems. Now, they will lose control to Canberra for all but their own public service employees and workers in unincorporated small businesses, subject to a High Court challenge.