A major advance for working people this century was the reduction of the working day from 12 or more hours a day to eight. Yet in recent arbitration hearings in the Industrial Relations Commission the CRA-owned coal mining company, Novacoal, has been arguing for workers to return to nineteenth century conditions.
Novacoal wants coal miners to work 12-hour shifts. It went to the IRC in an attempt to break an eight-month strike against the 12-hour shift — in reality a 12½ hour shift because the shift begins from when workers arrive at their actual work site.
On April 24, the IRC ruled in favour of allowing CRA to introduce the 12-hour shift. However, it ruled against Novacoal's bid to remove employment preferences for unionists from the award.
This decision underlines a danger which is already threatening the award system as a real guarantee of adequate and improving wages and conditions. Enterprise bargaining and individual contracts have already started to undermine award guarantees. The IRC decision to reduce the conditions of an award is another blow.
With Howard in government the trade union movement is now faced with a two-pronged attack on the award system. Firstly, the industrial relations minister has foreshadowed the introduction of minimum rate awards rather than paid rate awards. Reith's new award system will dramatically reduce the range of conditions guaranteed to workers. All other conditions have to be bargained at enterprise level or through the unfair individual contract basis.
Secondly, although the new legislation will allow the IRC to vet union agreements, Reith's system of work place agreements is intended to eventually reduce the role of the IRC. A rival organisation will immediately be set up — the Employee Advocates Agency — with no power to vet employer-employee agreements.
If the trade unions are going to argue that the IRC should be able to continue to play a major role, it must be on the basis that the award system, which guarantees wages and conditions at least at the current level of paid rate awards, be preserved. In fact, the IRC should not be able to reduce conditions at all. Furthermore, the introduction of regular wage indexation where wages rise automatically with inflation should be the bedrock on which all industry agreements are negotiated.
The IRC's decision on the 12-hour shift came soon after the Coalition won government and points to the myth of the IRC being independent of politics. Even when the award system was not under challenge, the arbitration system could often be more of a hindrance than a help. Without a proper award system, it will become a tool for systematically reducing workers' conditions.
Trade unions will have to prepare themselves for a struggle to defend the award system. In fact, it is likely that many unions will not only be faced with the prospect of a general struggle to defend awards but a specific struggle to fight to preserve their own conditions. Both struggles are going to need a revitalised labour movement, the most urgent priority at the moment.