Do as I do, not as I say
Over the weekend, the ACTU launched its advertising campaign against the Government’s industrial relations package. They’re good ads, I think — better than any recent ALP election campaign ad.
Yesterday the IR minister, Kevin Andrews, wouldn’t guarantee that nobody would be treated in the manner depicted in the ads. Blog readers would know why he couldn’t make that guarantee — Manas and I pointed out that Andrews’s own department was already trying to force people onto AWAs that undercut their pay and conditions.
Today’s Australian outlines the dispute:
The man in charge of John Howard’s workplace reform agenda is facing a revolt from his own department, with staff claiming they were coerced into signing non-union individual employment contracts.
[...]
For the past nine months, Mr Andrews’s department has been locked in a battle with half its 3000 staff, who are holding out against the Government’s preferred course that they sign AWAs.
In Mr Andrews’s Department of Employment and Workplace Relations it is official policy that all new staff are only employed on AWAs.
But the department recently told 15 employees in Melbourne that if they wanted to continue working, they would need to sign AWAs.
The staff were even provided with forms that already had the yes box ticked to the question: “I acknowledge my commitment to sign an Australian Workplace Agreement.”
Stephen Smith agrees that DEWR is a model employer, and this dispute “shows what life will be like under the Howard Government’s proposed changes — people won’t have choice, they’ll be forced onto individual contracts unfairly.”
Manas thinks Andrews has inadvertently revealed a truth he would rather hide:
This morning on ABC Radio, Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews said, with some exasperation, of the ongoing dispute with DEWR staff and the CPSU:
This is just a normal dispute which has been beaten up by the union because it’s convenient to do so in the current climate.
That’s the whole point, Minister Andrews. This is just a normal dispute. Every day, in your average kind of disputes, workers across the country are forced onto individual contracts, often with lesser conditions than those to which they would otherwise be entitled, thanks to your government’s IR legislation.
It will only get worse.
I have a number of colleagues at university say that they cannot know from week to week how many hours’ work they will have. Some weeks they will have no work at all and they worry about their financial solvency, whilst on other weeks they have to work so many hours that their academic preparation is compromised and they have to work the hours allocated or they face retrenchment.
When asked whether this was fair for them, they reply that this was out of control of the employers and they seem resigned about this as a fact of life. And I reckon they probably vote Liberal.
And therein lies the rub: the fabric of society WILL be damaged, in the eyes of progressive people like us, but mainstream society will see this as an accepted fact of life, just like death and taxes. Look at China where to pay $200K for your child’s degree is seen as something normal and a reality in people’s miserable lives.
It is like a progressively fibrosing disease where, once you reach a certain stage, no amount of treatment will repair the damage because the damaged state is now considered “normal”. And with the current state of the federal Labor Party, I doubt that anything can change for the better in my lifetime. It is with a heavy heart that I realise I may have to forsake Oz forever and spend my remaining days in Cuba.
I suppose the ads are necessary given the desperation of the situation, but I don’t think they will be that effective. You’re probably right about them being better than any recent ALP ads though.
“It is with a heavy heart that I realise I may have to forsake Oz forever and spend my remaining days in Cuba. “
Just don’t say anything bad about Castro while you are there Max!
Whatever happened to NZ and Canada Max, or are the backloading boat rates to Cuba just too good to refuse? Hey, if they’re offering big bucks to skipper those empty boats back, just make sure you get an ironclad workplace agreement mate, cos I reckon union solidarity won’t help you there mate, if things go a bit pear shaped.
You can smell the irony, can’t you.
Seriously, I am going to NZ next Wednesday to help out in their election campaign. Follow my ixcellant edvintures on chinasoy.blogspot.com
The only significant countries in the Western World with a nominally socially democratic government are Canada, NZ, Spain, UK and Germany. Virtually all the countries in the EU are currently governed by conservatives, often in a coalition with the ultra-right.
Looking at the above few shining lights, the UK Labour Party is virtually a Thatcherite clone, and it has under Bliar eliminated virtually all elements of a social democracy. It may as well be called the New Tory Party.
Gerhard Schroeder’s red-green coalition is certain to be deposed by the CDU later this year and the latter’s leader is reportedly as bad as Thatcher – she’s not called Germany’s Thatcher for nothing.
Canada’s centrist Liberal government holds on to minority government by the most tenuous of margins as a corruption enquiry threatens to derail their upcoming election campaign, and are likely to be replaced by the Conservative Party which aims to decimate gay rights, abolish the Kyoto protocol and adopt a new precedent of US-GOP style policies.
The New Zealand Labour Party is in danger of being thrown out of office by September after not offering tax cuts in their upcoming budget. A racist, homophobe, neoliberal, anti-union coalition between the conservative National Party and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First seems to be a likely outcome.
In Spain, the left were only elected after a wave of anger following the Madrid bombings, hence their presence is a mere aberration. Barring an Act of God the Tories would still have an iron grip there.
So that’s the world trend – conservatism rules all around. They thrive on the fear, negativity and apathy of the people. And whilst the overall direction last century was forward, I seriously have cause to believe that the world is headed for a new millenium of regression, just like what happened in the Middle Ages.