Crumbs
The federal Industrial Relations Commission decision on September 21 has been hailed by the ACTU as a victory for the Accord process. The decision, which awarded a paltry $24 wage rise for workers in three stages, has been criticised by employer groups whose enterprise bargaining agenda of slashing wages and conditions (currently guaranteed by the award system) will be slowed. The Business Council of Australia has accused the IRC of "adopting the ACTU's distorted view that a minimum wage means a minimum wage increase, rather than a minimum wage level".
The $24 will not even compensate for inflation the 57% of the work force who have failed to negotiate pay rises under enterprise bargaining.
The centralised wage increases have been recognised by sections of the business press as necessary during a period of labour market deregulation in order to prevent a wages break-out. Their concerns centre more on the implications for enterprise bargaining under the current Industrial Relations Act. The employer submission to the commission on the review of awards recommended that awards be reduced to five basic entitlements: a single minimum hourly pay rate; annual leave; sick leave; parental leave; and equal pay for work of equal value. The commission ruled that this would be inconsistent with the act's requirement that awards be maintained as a "secure, relevant and consistent" safety net of employment conditions.
The government submission also initially argued for awards to contain five "essential standards", although this changed to 15 under pressure from the ACTU. However, the government still intends to remove as much as possible from awards and the prospect remains that it will toss these conditions onto the enterprise bargaining table.
The preferred option of employers is to gut awards and hold down the minimum wage prescribed by the safety net. This would allow them to reduce wages and conditions in a much shorter time while complying with the "no-disadvantage" provisions of the Industrial Relations Act.
While industrial relations minister Laurie Brereton hailed the IRC decision as a vindication of the government's program of industrial relations reform, the ALP's real plan of "reform" is somewhat different. In Keating's first major speech after winning the 1993 federal elections, he outlined to the Institute of Company Directors in Melbourne the government's perspective that enterprise agreements would replace awards as full substitutes and not merely as add-ons. His May 1994 "Working Nation" employment paper continued the process of further "reforming" awards by removing a detailed prescription of entitlements and conditions.
Employer groups have now declared their intention to push for major changes to the Industrial Relations Act with a view to radically deregulating the award system. The trick for the government will be to satisfy the demands of employers without overstraining its relationship with the union bureaucracy, which is beginning to suspect that the planned enterprise bargaining system could bypass the unions — and therefore union bureaucrats.
Unions will never be able to seriously defend the interests of labour while they remain politically tied to the ALP. To get more than crumbs, workers need unions that are independent of Labor and its big business mates.