The gap between work and choices

The secondary target of WorkChoices is the independent industrial tribunals. Their powers have mostly been enfeebled or given to partisan government agencies or private contractors. The federal tribunal is left mainly with responsibility for administering the anti-strike laws targeted at unions.

And then there is another, unexpected target: the companies who refuse to play ball with the government, who wish instead to maintain constructive, co-operative relations with a unionised workforce. For many companies, this is the most sensible way to make a profit.

In no other Western democracy does the government micro-manage consenting relations between employees and employers to such a degree, fining employers for making agreements that allow union officials onto their own workplace or permit union-provided training. While decrying the “paternalistic influence of ... third parties”, the minister, at the stroke of a pen, declares provisions in collective agreements “prohibited content” and makes the users of such provisions potentially liable to large fines.

It is, as the president of the conservative H.R. Nicholls Society says, the “old Soviet system of command and control, where every economic decision has to go back to some central authority and get ticked off”.

To get a small sense of the partisan nature of WorkChoices, consider the origins of the provision concerning “operational reasons” for dismissal. The Prime Minister stated that this provision arose from a dispute at the Blair Athol coal mine, in central Queensland, owned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. Blair Athol management, according to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, had created a “black list” of union members who were “singled out for termination” through a redundancy process. Mine management went about “demeaning” those targeted for termination, a practice “designed to force (unionists) to accept the redundancy package”.

This case was pursued by the blacklisted workers under the unfair dismissal provisions of the old law. Following numerous cases, appeals and delays, most of the workers were reinstated and the case was settled after seven years. Reports suggest that Rio Tinto spent $20 million in legal fees, trying unsuccessfully to keep these 16 unionists out of its mine sites.

Then along came the chance to rewrite the rules. Lawyers from Freehills, who represented the employer in the Blair Athol case, and other firms commonly representing employers, helped draft the WorkChoices legislation. No more Blair Athols.

In regional areas, away from the resource boom districts, alternative opportunities may be hard to come by.

There is a national shortage of nurses yet in Parkes, 100 kilometres from Cowra, a nursing home gave five nurses a work choice: take a 22 per cent pay cut to become “care service employees”, or be made redundant. That’s legal, said the OWS. In a small town, if you take on your employer, you may also be hurting your chances of getting a job elsewhere. So there are stories from places like Coffs Harbour, Merimbula and Albury of people forced to sign AWAs that cut their pay, in ways that are mostly illegal but for which redress is quite impractical.

For women, the problems of WorkChoices are not restricted to regional areas. Women are more reliant on awards, and people reliant on awards have most to lose from WorkChoices. Most on collective agreements will have the collective bargaining power to resist reductions in pay and conditions. But those who are entirely award-reliant, who until now have been subject to the collective protection of awards, are people who are without individual market bargaining power. They have suddenly had that collective protection taken away.

Women have more to lose from the attacks on institutions and from the shift to individual contracts. Unionism and collective bargaining have a bigger positive effect on women’s pay than on men’s. Conversely, individual contracting has a bigger negative effect on women’s pay than men’s. Women on individual contracts agreements have an hourly wage nearly one-fifth lower than men, whereas for women on collective agreements the difference is more like one-tenth.

WorkChoices killed off the ability of women and unions to pursue equal pay, parental leave and other important conditions through industrial tribunals. Indeed, some types of equal pay claims are now illegal. At the same time, actions that are illegal may become increasingly tolerated.