Devious corporations, devious government, poor workers …

What about single site operations employing more than 100 workers? Would the workers be safe from corporate skulduggery? No, the employer would simply establish arrangements such as employing all the clerical staff with one company, production workers with another and maintenance staff with yet another.

John Howard went to the last election promising to lift the unfair dismissal legislation burden from small business, those with less than 20 workers, and he has suddenly lifted the threshold to 100.

It is very obvious why. He wants to deny workers, not just those working for small businesses, but virtually all workers, access to unfair dismissal protection.

Some may think this is very unlikely, but anyone familiar with the Trading Hour legislation in Queensland (and probably other states as well) would be well aware of how corporations restructured to ensure that the number of employees in retail operations were below the minimum thresholds, just so that they would be exempt from regulated trading hours.

It may be useful to reminisce about what happened with unfair dismissals prior to the enactment of specific legislation dealing with the issue.

The only mechanism for reinstatement was an order of the Industrial Commission to resolve an industrial dispute. In many cases it was a “real” dispute with workers walking off the job: in some cases it was a “paper” dispute.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see what will become commonplace if there is no judicial system to allow unfair dismissal cases to determined.

With skills shortages growing across the nation, unemployment falling and the labour market being deregulated I wonder if the business community understands that there will be a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the labour market. The H.R. Nichols policy prescription may be what businesses want in periods of job shortages, but as the economy moves closer and closer to full employment I wonder if many in the business community have bothered to look around the corner.