On Sydney's 2UE this morning:
The Howard Government is now planning to have an army of inspectors to monitor its so-called fairness test to make sure you are not being duded of pay and conditions. This is kind of becoming farcical now isn’t it? They tried to back peddle on this Work Choices disaster. 600 new bureaucrats at a cost of an extra $370 million over four years which kind of highlights the stupidity of what they have done. Once we just had the Industrial Relations Commission and the state bodies, independent outfits which heard wage cases and set standards, you could take them a dispute. Now under John Howard, we have a bureaucratic spider web. The Workplace Advisory Service, the Workplace Authority, previously known as the Office of the Employment Advocate, the Workplace Ombudsman, previously known as the Office of Workplace Services, the Fair Pay Commission secretariat and there is a whole bunch of others as well. Must have cost them a fortune change the stationary let alone the advertising. But could you imagine trying to find your way through that lot, whether you are a worker or an employer? Just imagine if you are in small business, honestly trying to do the right thing, who do you go to? The Workplace Advisory Service? The Workplace Authority, previously known as the Office of the Employment Advocate? What do you do? Driven by knee jerk ideology this government has made a total hash of industrial relations. All they needed to do really was take the old unfair dismissal laws work better for small business, that was essential, had to be done. Instead they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Anyway, it all goes before Parliament this week.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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1 comments:
Yep, I reckon the Libs made a complete botch of it. But I think they SHOULD have made changes to reduce unfair dismissal laws for small business AND got rid of a whole lot of the 1500 or so incompatible awards.... But to do that, they needed to let people enter into separate contracts and have these NOT deal in any way with the 'fundamental, protected by law, basic rights of an employee'. It was always going to be a hotch-potch if each contract was meant to 'write in' what the government said was sacro-sanct. Better to have separate deals that simply noted that, in addition to what was agreed between the parties, the federally mandated minimums (as set by the Feds from time to time) were also incorporated by such reference. And to prevent any inadvertent stuff-up, the Feds just had to note that the minimums could not be 'contracted out'. That approach would have been very similar to the Trade Practices Act of 1973 (yes 34 years old and still running without the changes IR has had)... The TPA notes that the fundamental rights of a consumer remain in effect, no matter what stipulations a supplier puts in any contract for the supply of consumer goods.
Anyway, if they'd listened, or had half a brain, the Libs could have achieved the additional flexibility they wanted, without tripping so badly as to cause a complete reversion in the progress of IR. For a very long time, these past two Howard years will be remembered for this stuff-up.... and the 'own goal' offered to Labor.
Graeme (email is prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)
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