MyGreenway Comment - Union bashing

John Howard continues to intimidate the voting public, the majority of whom are average workers with the notion that Unions are bad. Trade Unions are organisations that were created a hundred years ago to combat cruel exploitative bosses who paid workers very little for their labour and skills. Through collecting the like skills of working people, organisers created a "union" whereby workers could collectively bargain for a set of minimum conditions. By combining their might, they could improve their worth.

To this day, the union's motto has been "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay".

Over the next century, unions have been able to allow business to function but be challenged too. We are certainly all more wealthier than we were a hundred years ago. Unions have worked with employers to gain rising wages, holidays, sick leave, the 40 hour week, maternity and paternity leave and a whole range of other conditions that has allowed working people to enjoy their lives and to more or less of an extent be allowed to prosper.

The Liberals have painted a picture that Unions are ALL bad and damaging to business. Like any organisation that gets too big or too powerful, they can overstep the mark. If a union gets too powerful it can if it tries, provide too many benefits that makes workers counter productive. Our wharves were one example where reforms were needed.

However, it has been Labor governments under Hawke and Keating that realised this and in the spirit of goodwill, reduced the power of unions by making membership non-compulsory. They created a system of collective bargaining in Australia that was successful and removed the notion that CPI (Inflation linked) wage rises were an entitlement of workers. Wage rises would have to be linked to productivity increases and as such from the late 80's Australian workers have all had to become more productive and competitive. In turn, business has become more efficient and more profitable.

Enter the Liberals and the constant scaremongering at Unions. Workchoices was disguised as a way to increase jobs in the economy, but it comes at a price. By eroding working conditions it makes the price of labour per head cheaper, thereby allowing the employer to puchase more labour for the same price.

However, if you pay workers less across the board, in the long term, they will have less money to spend causing the economy to shrink. Only the access to credit will blur this fact as workers or consumers will need to get access to more credit in turn to be able to pay for the same set of goods and services. Ouch! That means even higher debt for working Australians.

It is not a competitive and creative policy. It will contract the economy. It will only allow a smaller proportion of the economy, bosses and shareholders will soon receive higher incomes or profits.

Quite simply by its nature, Workchoices, it could be argued is un-Australian. It's unfair and takes from the weaker and poorer and gives to the stronger and wealthier. When did this become the Australian way?

So Tony Abbott, makes you feel guilty for being a member of a Union. Get over yourself mate!

The John Howard plan is to make you not vote for Labor because 70% of the future front bench will be ex-Unionists. So what.

If you vote Liberal, 100% of the front bench will be Liberal. That's 100% of ministers and backbenchers who voted for a policy that lowers the wage of working Australians in the long term.

What would you prefer?

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Bully Abbott joins Hockey in Union bashing

SMH,19th October, 2007

Government frontbencher Tony Abbott has referred to Australian unions as no more important than local football clubs only a few hours after Prime Minister John Howard hosed down controversy over similar comments by his Workplace Relations Minister.

Joe Hockey caused a stir yesterday when when he said on Sydney radio that the role of unions in Australia was essentially over. Mr Howard was forced to water down Mr Hockey's comments, saying the Government was not against unions but against union control.

However on ABC television last night, Mr Abbott re-ignited the controversy, saying he didn't think unions should have any "special privilege". The comments came when Mr Abbott confirmed he had been a member of the Australian Journalists' Association when he worked at The Bulletin magazine in the early 1980s.

Mr Abbott moved a strike resolution at Australian Consolidated Press, publisher of The Bulletin, after the company sacked the publication's photographic department. "I was happy to be a member of a union, but I don't think that unions should have a special privilege and I certainly don't think that unions should own and operate a political party," he said.

"One of the reasons why I joined the Liberal Party and not the Labor Party is because, while I think unions are all very well in their way, I don't think that they should be privileged above all other organisations.

"I don't see that unions are more important than the RSL or the Country Women's Association or the local football club for that matter." This morning Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd defended his shadow cabinet from criticism by the Government that it was stacked with unionists. The Labor team had a range of candidates other unionists, Mr Rudd told Sydney radio this morning.

"In three of the seats that we aim to win in this election we're running three former military officers in the Australian Defence Force," he told ABC Radio. "We're also running three former mayors, a deputy mayor, three local councillors - a whole bunch of people from a whole range of different professions.

"When it comes to our team, I'm proud of our team. I think we have a first-class set of candidates right across the country." The Prime Minister was trying to run a negative fear campaign, Mr Rudd said.

"Once upon a time it was reds under the beds, now it's something else."

Asbestos crusader Bernie Banton backs Unions - "They helped us get compensation from James Hardie"

SMH,18th October, 2007

Asbestos disease sufferer and activist Bernie Banton has attacked federal Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey's comments that the role of unions in the Australian workplace is over.

Mr Banton was a high profile campaigner for asbestos disease sufferers in the union-backed case against the James Hardie company. He said Mr Hockey's comment today was wrong and that, without the unions, asbestos victims would never have received justice.

"I take total exception to that,'' Mr Banton told ABC Radio. "Where was Joe Hockey when we were fighting against James Hardie? He was nowhere to be seen. "Without their support and their absolute total commitment to getting that deal done, we wouldn't have a deal for all those thousands of future victims.

"Without the union movement, we would have been getting absolutely diddly-squat for all those victims."

Mr Banton said another 53,000 people were going to be affected by asbestos-related disease by 2020, and 13,000 of those people would die due to mesothelioma. "He says that unions are irrelevant? I think Joe Hockey is irrelevant, totally irrelevant to this election,'' he said.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said he was surprised by Mr Hockey's extreme comments. He said the James Hardie case showed the important role unions still played in workers lives.

"The're part and parcel of the fabric of Australian life,'' he said. "I'm surprised Mr Hockey would take such an extreme position.''

Mr Hockey, whose Liberal Party has launched scathing election advertisements highlighting the 70 per cent of Labor frontbenchers with a union background, said it was incredible Labor intended to govern with such a high union representation. "The role of unions is essentially over," Mr Hockey told ABC Radio today.

This is because the Howard government has made it it's mission to destroy the trade union movement in it s 11 years in office - MyGreenway editor

"That's because we have a system with a strong, independent umpire that is providing protections for workers. "Because the unions do not cover 80 per cent of the workers out there, we find that people are turning to the Workplace Authority and the Workplace Ombudsman to obtain information and to get protection."

Mr Hockey said workers who were not union members could turn to the Workplace Ombudsman for advice, but the Labor Party wanted to dismantle that office. He said Australians viewed unions as irrelevant and were choosing not to join them, a trend that started under former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke.

"I don't think anyone would have thought that in 2007 it would be credible for Kevin Rudd to go to an election with 70 per cent of his frontbench made up of former union officials, and that would be a dramatic increase in the number of union officials that, say, Bob Hawke had," he said.

"Under Bob Hawke, at one stage, they were 50 per cent of the workforce and gradually they've been falling, most dramatically, even under [former Labor prime minister Paul] Keating. "They're just down to 20 per cent - one in five workers are choosing to join the unions.

"Unions have an important safety net role in some industries but, overall, Australians are choosing not to join the unions because they see them as irrelevant to their lives."

The ACTU has hit back at a Liberal Party campaign highlighting the union affiliations of Labor's frontbench team, saying it is insulting to working families. ACTU president Sharan Burrow said a television advertisement released yesterday by the Liberals was wrong to suggest unions were anti-business.

The ad was also insulting to the millions of Australians whose job security and living standards were protected by unions. "The job of all unions is to protect secure, well-paid employment for Australian working families," she said.

"To achieve this we need profitable businesses that value their workers.

"The idea that unions would somehow want to undermine business is, frankly, absurd."

Ms Burrow said that, under a Labor government, unions would want to work with employers to grow the economy and increase the opportunities for Australian workers. This new ad from the Liberal Party is another attempt by John Howard and Peter Costello to distract attention from the real issues facing working people in this election," she said.

Labor yesterday responded to the Liberal advertisement with its own advertisement on YouTube. In it, Mr Rudd dismisses the Liberal advertisement as another scare tactic designed to detract attention from the WorkChoices industrial laws.

KEVIN RUDD claims the Howard Government is prepared to say anything, do anything or spend anything in its desperate struggle to stay in office. In his wild defence of Work Choices, Joe Hockey is single-handedly justifying that allegation.

Admittedly, Hockey was handed an unenviable job, required to defend the indefensible. That the original version of Work Choices was unfair has been tacitly admitted by the Government, first by its repeated refusal to promise that no worker would be worse off and then by its belated introduction of a "fairness test" over the protests of the employer groups.

The need for such a test is demonstrated by the fact the newly constituted Workplace Authority has queried or failed such a high proportion of the Australian Workplace Agreements employers submitted for approval.

Hockey's problem is that the Government hasn't been able to bring itself to speak the unvarnished truth: Yes, Work Choices was unfair, but it is not as unfair as it was now we've backed down and modified it so heavily.

Rather, Hockey has been required to maintain the pretence that Work Choices is and always has been beyond criticism, against a plethora of academic studies - many of them sponsored by Labor state governments - pointing out the many low-income workers disadvantaged by the original scheme. (The modified scheme has come too late to be reflected in the studies' findings.)

In our adversarial two-party democracy, Hockey is, of course, entitled to vigorously defend his side against its critics. And no doubt each of those studies contains statements of fact or interpretation with which he could legitimately take issue.

But Hockey's defence has hardly been at the level of contesting facts and figures. Rather, he has too easily resorted to bluster and abusiveness, seeking to dismiss the studies' findings by attacking the character of their authors.

If they've ever had any association with the unions - which, unsurprisingly, the great majority of labour-market economists and industrial relations academics have - their findings are instantly dismissed as biased and without credibility.

In persisting with this crude and unintelligent tactic last week, however, Hockey blundered over the top. In response to a study by academics at Sydney University's Workplace Research Centre which found that workers on AWAs tended to be paid significantly less than workers on collective agreements - wow, what a shocker - he let fly. It was "the same old flawed research from the same old union academics". It had been prepared by "former trade union officials who are parading as academics". (This last was factually wrong.)

Even Peter Costello opted for abuse rather than argument. The study was "contaminated" because Unions NSW had contributed to its cost. It had been prepared by "union hacks".

Now, as I've argued myself, it is perfectly reasonable to contend that research paid for by vested interests can't be regarded as "independent". But Hockey and his fellow ministers use that argument only when it suits them - that is, only when the research findings don't suit them.

Ministers have been happy to embrace the questionable findings of the econometric modelling on the economic cost of reregulating the labour market commissioned by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for those Business Coalition TV ads.

John Howard even referred to the modeller as "one of the most respected independent economists in Canberra".

But in the case of last week's report from the Workplace Research Centre, there was an additional consideration that leaves Hockey and Costello looking foolish.

This wasn't just another quickie, union-funded hatchet job on Work Choices, as they implied. It was a major, peer-reviewed research program that, against the stiffest competition and close scrutiny, had won funding as an Australian Research Council "linkage project".

Linkage projects are specifically designed to encourage collaborations between university and industry. In other words, half the project's funding is coming from the Federal Government, with the very terms of the scheme requiring the academics to find the other half from one vested interest or another.

Last October, the Education Minister, Julie Bishop, said: "When an independent organisation invests in an ARC-supported research program, it can be confident that it is committing its hard-earned dollars not only to a worthwhile project, but to a project undertaken by some of Australia's best researchers." Oh.

It must offend every academic in the land to see Government ministers idly traducing the reputation of the winners of a much-coveted research council grant. Little wonder the academics involved have threatened to call in their lawyers.

But that's not all. The Australia@Work research project Hockey and Costello so unthinkingly trashed is a big deal. It's a valuable and all-too-rare longitudinal study, tracking the work experience of more than 8000 workers for five years, at an estimated total cost of $2.4 million.

Hockey has repeatedly accused his union opponents of lying, but his own standards of truthfulness leave much to be desired. He routinely misrepresents the findings of a particular Bureau of Statistics survey and his department's recent report Agreement Making in Australia was a shameful document, calculated to mislead the public and the Parliament.

Frankly, Hockey is out of control, allowing his clumsy tongue to run well ahead of his brain. He needs to calm down and behave more like a leader commanding public respect.

I hardly think looking desperate enough to say anything and abuse anyone is a smart way for the Howard Government to regain the electorate's confidence.

Ross Gittins is the Sydney Morning Herald's Economics Editor.