IR changes will damage the fabric of society
Seventeen academics have written twelve papers criticising the Howard Government’s industrial relations agenda. Their report card (pdf) concludes:
On the basis of our considered analysis, the proposed changes will do nothing to address labour and skills shortages or the productivity slowdown. They will, however, damage the fabric of Australian society by encouraging poorly-paid jobs with irregular hours and little security, worsening work-family balance. The focus of Federal Government policy is to give employers power over employees instead of promoting innovative solutions based on workplace partnerships.
The group’s convenor, Professor Russell Lansbury of the University of Sydney Business School, explained that the term “flexibility” being bandied around by the Government is misleading.
NICK GRIMM: But what about creating a more flexible job market?
RUSSELL LANSBURY: Well, flexibility is good, but what we see in this legislation is that it’s flexibility for the employer, not flexibility for both sides, and we feel that to gain the support of workers, it needs to be a two sided process.
I haven’t read the papers yet, so I can’t comment on their content, but I will point out that they’re available for download.
“Fairness at work have been things that have stood in this country for 100 years and within a short 12-page statement by our prime minister much of it seems to be swept away.”
Omigawd, conservative academics attacking progressive Howard! Sounds like time for a full page newspaper spread from a cloister of concerned academics.
By creating tiered conditions of employment, only tiered quality of employees can follow. Noboby with half a brain will be loyal to somebody who doesn’t HAVE to be loyal to them. Job insecurity will have more of a major effect the golden word, productivity, than any other workplace concern.
Re: above note, well, all you will find is that the business that survive are those that work by rat tactics or are family owned and operated. I think that Australians will start to lose out on the lower end jobs. People from overseas on a holiday/work visa will be the ones sweeping those positions up as they are happy for any sort of paid employment and have no long term stability requirements anyway to be bothered by any IR changes.
So where does that leave us? Low end jobs are usually the bread and butter for students for instance. I suppose that means you should only consider doing tertiary education if you were quite sure you would be good at it and able to get a decent job after you finished because it would be a long time to be living solely off youth allowance.
The other group that comes to mind to be greatly affected would be those with parenting or caring requirements. It’s hard enough to find a job that lets you work part time. Now you’d be freaking out every time you applied for a day’s leave for family reasons. And to think I read not that long ago about a push to try and get mothers back into paid work as soon as practicable.