From the moment Prime Minister John Howard won his fourth election in October last year, with the bonus that the Coalition would gain control of the Senate after July 1 this year, he made his intentions very clear: industrial relations reform would be a high priority. The Workplace Relations Act, which former Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith ushered though the Senate after lengthy negotiations with the Democrats in 1996, was always just a starting point for the Howard Government. For the Coalition, and its business supporters, a freer labour market is an article of faith.
To say such legislation has made it difficult for unions to operate, even survive, would be an understatement. For example, the 1996 Act made it harder to recruit, especially in non-union workplaces. Changes to the Act now being proposed will make it even harder.
At its core the legislation reflects a fundamentally different mindset about how the workplace operates. For the Howard Government, most employers can be trusted; the Scrooges of the world are few and far between. Employers and individual employees can amicably negotiate mutually beneficial arrangements. Third parties, for which read unions, simply impede the process, not only to the detriment of the employers but often employees.
For unions, employees are best protected in a collective agreement; if their thinking has progressed from the simplistic ‘all bosses are bastards’ rhetoric of yesterday, they still believe that many employers see employees as a cost, not an asset. Myriad annual reports that describe employees ‘as our most valuable resource’ is simply sophistry.
In such an industrial environment for unions, it is easy for organised labour to lay all its woes at the doorstep of the Howard Government. Falling union numbers (in the private sector they represent less than one worker in five), faltering wage campaigns in some industry sectors, and failure to prevent management exerting its prerogative over workplace change without negotiating can be too easily attributed to the legislation and employers who have been emboldened by it.
Unions, however, have been far less willing to reflect on their own weaknesses. Industrial and political cultures that reflect yesteryear remain unchallenged; authoritarianism, factionalism and nepotism still afflict the unions. In the past, when many employers acted as unions’ recruiting officers and the closed shop was an accepted norm, it hardly mattered. Today, they are exploited by employers and used by employees as a reason for not joining.
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