The gap between work and choices

Western Australia’s Equal Opportunity Commissioner warned that one consequence of WorkChoices is a fear among workers about lodging complaints concerning discrimination. Stripped of the collective protections provided by the law - or at least, of confidence in these protections - it is women who are most vulnerable in the dysfunctional workplace.

But it is both easy and dangerous to fall into a sort of resigned torpor, to accept that all our rights have been taken away and we might as well just get used to it. In reality, workers still have many rights at work. There are a lot fewer than existed in the past, but they still exist. The problem for many workers is to know what rights they still have, and possess the confidence to exercise them. This is a special problem for non-unionists, who make up the majority of employees, as they are less likely to be informed about their rights or to have the ability to enforce them.

In one way, workers are lucky that WorkChoices came in when it did - during a resource-driven boom. For many occupations, there simply are not enough workers to meet employers’ needs.

But try explaining to the half a million workers presently unemployed that they are the ones with the upper hand in bargaining with a potential employer, and see what sort of look you get. Explain it to the sole parents or the disabled people on “welfare-to-work”.

The “boom” is uneven, many people are missing out (real wages are falling for about half the workforce), and economic growth is slow in several states. No boom lasts forever, and this one will come to an end as surely as every other has. Then, even the workers who are momentarily protected from the effects of these laws because their skills are in short supply will find them biting hard.

In the long run, it is that fundamental shift in power - which eventually tears away the entitlements that workers fought so long to get - that represents the biggest threat posed by these laws. It is not what it does in 2007 or 2008 that comprises the worst aspects of WorkChoices; it is what it could do to the prospects of our children and our grandchildren.