By Peter Boyle
Prime Minister Paul Keating's April 21 address to the Institute of Company Directors was a sharp reminder that his government remains firmly committed to the conservative, "economic rationalist" agenda — despite attempts to pretend otherwise during the election campaign. Tariff cuts are to continue and further corporate tax cuts will be delivered, he pledged before 800 representatives of the corporate world.
In addition, Keating promised a major "renovation" of industrial relations, based on enterprise bargaining and a whittling down of the award system. This, he asserted with a straight face, was the mandate for an "Australian social democratic agenda" that the Labor Party received on March 13.
Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett gleefully welcomed what he saw as Keating's partial support for his anti-union industrial relations program, and John Hewson grumbled that Keating had failed to come clean on his real position on industrial relations before the elections.
Yet it is true that the basic thrust of Keating's vision for a new industrial relations system is not new. It was the substance of Accord Mark VII (the deal with the ACTU stitched up just before the federal elections) and was clearly foreshadowed in the 1989 Accord Mark VI.
So the expressions of unease at Keating's remarks by ACTU assistant secretary Jennie George and Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary John Halfpenny seem disingenuous. They are nervous at Keating's blunt suggestion that workplace agreements could become "full substitutes" for awards, especially as both have argued that the ALP stands for the defence of award conditions and the award system against the contract-based systems pushed by the Liberal and National parties.
What will the workers (whom they urged to support Labor) think when they see Keating promise to deliver an industrial relations system with a remarkable resemblance to that advocated by the Coalition parties? What will they make of Keating's hope that awards will shrink into mere safety nets covering a few minimum conditions? Of his call for "clear, substantial and easily enforceable" penalties for breaches of enterprise bargains?
Labor's form of "labour market deregulation" is different from that advocated by the Coalition (and implemented in Victoria by Kennett), but the difference is only one of degree. Under Labor so far, unions have a guaranteed place in the striking of workplace agreements. As the law stands, an enterprise agreement cannot be registered unless a registered union is a party to it. Such agreements also cannot disadvantage employees in relation to the terms and conditions of their award.
At present federally recognised enterprise agreements offer employers ee main ways:
- by lowering labour costs through the trading off of over-award terms and conditions and through the effect of inflation on award rates;
- by lowering the cost of labour not directly covered by the agreement, for example through contracting out work;
- by increasing the intensity of labour exploitation, using fewer workers to obtain the same output (and simultaneously adding to unemployment).
But the logic of moving to enterprise agreements is to sweep away all constraints on employees' "freedom" to bargain down their terms and conditions of employment. In his speech, Keating had two complaints about the current stage of the shift to enterprise bargaining: the pace of the shift and the tendency for such agreements to be simply "add-ons" to awards.
Big business has been quick to press home on these two points. The April 22 Financial Review editorialised:
"If Mr Keating wants enterprise bargaining to take central place in Australian wage fixing, and if he is serious about encouraging workplace reform, he must remove the artificial restrictions imposed by Senator Cook. He must allow the Industrial Relations Commission to certify enterprise agreements regardless of whether the workers belong to unions. And he must remove the restriction on what workers are allowed to bargain."
The Sydney Morning Herald's economics editor, Ross Gittins, argues that the current rules disenfranchise the 60% of workers who do not belong to unions. In short, Keating, he says, should get rid of the last significant differences between the industrial relations policies of the major parties.
The direction of this debate has at least the benefit of exploding the pathetic illusion peddled by the ACTU that enterprise bargaining represents a chance for both employers and employees to come out ahead. Labour market reform is revealed — like the rest of the economic rationalist agenda — to be nothing more than an excuse to allow employers to increase their exploitation of labour.