Labor won't guarantee job security
On November 1, unionists will gather across Australia to rally for job security. Such demonstrations are badly needed the collapse of Ansett, Qantas' threatened job losses, Coles Myer's mass sackings and the financial teetering of Pasminco are grim indications of the future for many workers.In a recent study conducted by the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University, Jeff Borland, Bob Gregory and Peter Sheehan mapped out the drastic decline in full-time jobs that occured during the 1990s.
The study showed that while jobs paying less than $300 a week in real earnings increased by 58%, and those paying $300-$500 increased by 43%, jobs paying between $700-$1400 decreased by 14%. While at the beginning of 1990s only 26% of workers earned less than $500 a week, in 2000 nearly 39% did.
These trends point to the real problems with job security. Workers are increasingly being forced into part-time or short-term work, and are losing the many conditions that go with permanent employment, such as holiday pay, maternity leave, overtime loading and long service leave.
We can only hope that the union leaders who have organised the November 1 rallies aren't relying on an ALP government to restore job security.
The Labor Party has been making a lot of noise lately about restoring job security. On October 18, Kim Beazley's Plan for Job Security was released. But the document contains little that is new.
Beazley's main focus is on ensuring employee entitlements. The ALP's proposal, not new but released a few months ago, is a substantial improvement on the Coalition's. It promises a compulsory insurance scheme which employers would pay into (unlike the Coalition's taxpayer-funded scheme). It falls short, however, of ensuring union supervision over the fund.
But job security requires more than providing eight weeks pay to sacked workers. It means preventing jobs from being lost in the first place. This requires restoring some industrial muscle to the union movement.
It was an ALP government which introduced one of the biggest attacks on workers in Australian history: enterprise bargaining. Enterprise bargaining was an assault on the award system and provided employers with the ability to play workers off against each other.
The ALP has also entirely accepted that improved pay for workers should come only as a result of improved productivity. In many salaried occupations, improved productivity has come as the result of workers working longer hours for no extra pay. In other workplaces, improved productivity has meant more injuries and lower safety standards.
The bottom line is that corporate Australia has kept profit margins high for the last 10 years by forcing full-time workers to work harder, and employing part-time and casual workers to fill any gaps, saving itself a fortune in the process.
Companies that claim that they can't afford to keep their current workforce should be challenged. They should be forced to open their books for examination by unions and the work force. They should not be allowed to put company profits before the needs of their workers.
The ALP has made much of the Ansett collapse, arguing that the government should be offering private business a bigger subsidy to re-start the company. But even this is not good enough. Companies such as Ansett, which provide necessary services and employ thousands of workers, should be nationalised and put under the control of their workers. Only the small debtors should be compensated.
Jobs will also continue to be lost as long as companies have incentives to move their operations to places with cheaper wages and conditions. The only way to fight this is to act in solidarity with workers in such countries, and help to raise working conditions and wages. Active support for trade union organising across the globe is an essential part of workers' solidarity.
These are the kind of policies which, combined with the repeal of laws which hamper union power and outlaw solidarity strikes, are needed to guarantee long-term job security. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the ALP's corporate backers won't let the party support them.