This really could not be better said. From The Australian
In a separate development yesterday, the Coalition’s workplace relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, pledged that an Abbott government would not introduce any legislative changes to the operation of penalty rates, a move that was also aimed at negating Labor and union claims that the pay of workers would be cut by the Coalition.
Senator Abetz said penalty rates would remain the ‘province of the independent umpire, the Fair Work Commission’.
If they use the Commission properly and restructure the law there is little more than could be asked and there is little more they need to do. The Fair Work Act has been a disaster and needs to go but it has to be gotten rid of with a great deal of care and good sense. But they need to leave the Fair Work Commission in place. I am encouraged that this really could become one of the great reforming governments of Australian history.
ALP/Unions will lie and lie to scare the voters. Worked last time. Have voters become more mature in their thinking? Time will tell.
stackja
2 Mar 13 at 2:04 pm
Any starting point to workplace change or reform should demand a re-engineering and re-education of employers. I really wonder where their heads are at. Certainly not this century or possibly even last century
John Mainard Kaynes
2 Mar 13 at 2:27 pm
JMK
Can you please elaborate which employers and in what particular areas of IR should they be re-educated and in what way should their businesses be re-engineered vis a vis IR? and in given your response please advise your experience in establishing a business as an employer? thanks
Tintarella di Luna
2 Mar 13 at 2:41 pm
giving – damn coffee in the grappa just doesn’t work.
Tintarella di Luna
2 Mar 13 at 2:42 pm
Tintarella, JMK is only either a brainwashed idiot or else a panicking member of a unrepresentative union.
maurie
2 Mar 13 at 2:53 pm
yeah I figured that’d be the case maurie his choice of name is the dead giveaway.
Tintarella di Luna
2 Mar 13 at 3:02 pm
I guess the big scare that Tony ABbott will bring Work Chioces back will begin about a month before the election.
candy
2 Mar 13 at 3:30 pm
Another good initiative would be to re-establish the ABCC, but extend their scope to include mining, logistics, maritime, gas & oil & manufacturing.
Also resource them better than before and give them some real teeth to reign in union cretins.
Carpe Jugulum
2 Mar 13 at 3:58 pm
Has anyone seen new troll JMK and our friend Token together, in the same place at the same time?
eb
2 Mar 13 at 4:02 pm
Our Tone can still lose the unloseable….just let Eric baby talk about Work Choices mark 2.
All Labor has to do is make the very silly Libs keep denying they’ll attack penalty rates etc.
The LBJ ploy……staffer : But they didn’t say that. LBJ : No, but lets make the bastards deny it, a lot.
Alfonso
2 Mar 13 at 4:06 pm
did any of the changes to work choices and back again make much differences to Australia’s ranking in the OECD’s employment protection index?
Workchoices abolished the common law and the freedom of contract. Its 600 pages was filled with government mandated cannots.
On this point see http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/595 which is Richard Freeman’s essay “From fair-go to rip-off: Australia’s new labour code”.
There is an emerging contractual duty across common law jurisdictions of an implied term of contracts that employers promise to be good employers. Australia is behind in this common law innovation because of its reliance on regulations.
Jim Rose
2 Mar 13 at 4:44 pm
I think this time the Liberal Party might be able to say to the Union Party of Australia….”Bring it on”.
All The Liberal Party of Australia has to run on TV for the 80% of Australian Workers not in a 19th century us verses them battle is whether they will bring in laws that will stop,
HSU members having their dues pissed against a wall;
AWU ‘leaders’ controlling the parliament and the rule of law;
CFMEU ‘leaders’ destroying the economy and keeping people out of work;
The AEU ‘coterie’ not being able to teach kids to read or write;
The APS foisting the nanny state on us.
How long are the Liberal Party going to roll over for this Union Party crap.
And I haven’t even started on the MSU, and their employers, that add a minimum of 10% cost to our imports!
NoFixedAddress
2 Mar 13 at 4:56 pm
MUA…. not MSA….
NoFixedAddress
2 Mar 13 at 4:59 pm
Jim Rose – that article by Richard Freeman is complete and utter rubbish. AWAs were in place long before Workchoices, and were voted in by the Australian people in 1998, 2001 and 2004. Rudd and Gillard never had a mandate to abolish AWAs.
Milton von Smith
2 Mar 13 at 5:23 pm
Milton von Smith, deregulation is supposed to deregulate.
Jim Rose
2 Mar 13 at 5:34 pm
Actually, about a month before the election I think they might be a bit more panicked than that.
I suspect they’ll be having planted articles by Michelle and Laurie and that fool Riley from Channel 7 to the effect that he’s been found eating babies at midnight in a forest somewhere [with his mate Pell, just to throw in a bit of anti-Catholic titillation]
Seriously though, how much longer can this mess go on? The Australian electorate is over it and they want an election. Even the Labor Party is over it.
Does Gillard seriously think that her polling will improve the longer she subjects the working people of the electorates in western Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, to her own brand of condescending, ill-informed, grotesquely incompetent fiscal and social stupidity?
If ever there was an example of why someone suited to be a Pox Doctor’s Medical Receptionist should not be promoted to Prime Minister of a country, Gillard is it.
Greg James
2 Mar 13 at 5:55 pm
Candy @ 3.30pm
Dullard was already rabbiting on about it in Tasmania yesterday. It, of course, featured prominently on their ALPBC News24.
Septimus
2 Mar 13 at 6:08 pm
TdL, doesn’t the grappa go in the coffee and not the other way around?
Anyhow, bring Workchoices back I say. Rename it, rebadge it, whatever.
It was so overhyped last time that Labor and unions had to run actors in their scary commercials because they just couldn’t find real case studies to parade for their big scare campaign.
IR should be simple: The advantage in the relationship between employer and employee should always remain with the former.
They tend to be the most motivated, the most entrepreneurial, the most talented and most willing to take the risks.
They also have the most at stake if it all goes wrong and so too the biggest interest in ensuring that it doesn’t go bloody wrong.
Any employee who doesn’t like it and thinks the employer is exploiting them, then get off your arse and have a go at it yourself.
Ant
2 Mar 13 at 6:14 pm
Have just completed the second draft of Employers Response to Application for Unfair Dismissal Remedy.
“Conciliation Conference” in a week or so. The strength of the Applicant’s case will not be in issue at the conference. It’s just about “go away money”.
Pickles
2 Mar 13 at 6:16 pm
BTW, I’m an employee myself in a medium sized business and have been all my professional life. Workchoices didn’t make any difference whatsoever to my pay or conditions, but I did notice that a couple made redundant in the last 2 years ran straight to the lawyers in an attempt to pilfer some money from the company for unfair dismissal.
They lost. A-holes.
Ant
2 Mar 13 at 6:18 pm
Drama queen.
Gab
2 Mar 13 at 6:21 pm
I never understood how the labour market was going to be deregulated by an act that ran to 8oo pages with 1500 pages of regs.
Eliminating unfair dismissal would have been a nice simple first step in the right direction.
Nor did I understood how the right to undertake individual contracts could be eliminated at a stroke (or made ludicrously complicated) without a nationwide howl of protest from all the people who are supposed to be concerned about rights and liberies.
Poor Old Rafe
2 Mar 13 at 6:24 pm
Gab be nice,Jeff is special
Tal
2 Mar 13 at 6:40 pm
Oh dear. Whenever I hear lobotomised leftist losers (BIRM) use that term, my unshakable belief that peaceful co-existence with them is impossible is confirmed, yet again.
Start running, JMK…
Rabz
2 Mar 13 at 6:51 pm
Eliminating unfair dismissal would have been a nice simple first step in the right direction.
Funnily enough I agree. Yes some bosses are arseholes but unforunately that’s life. Too many poor workers are protected by the law.
sdfc
2 Mar 13 at 6:53 pm
Poor Old Rafe, employees and employers should be free to agree to contracts that terminate other than at will. long-term contracts are common in many markets.
see http://www.voxeu.org/article/bluntness-employment-protection-legislation
Firms voluntarily provide other protections to their employees in human capital rich relationships.
examples are serverance pay and pension plans. both retain employees and cover the risk to the employee of redundancy in a downturn after investing heavily in firm-specific capital.
Jim Rose
2 Mar 13 at 6:54 pm
Until the employee is hired the employer owes nothing to them. The minute they are employed (or the minute the probationary period is over) the employer is bogged down forever. Weird.
dan
2 Mar 13 at 6:54 pm
Jeff, nothing to stop you being a captain of industry and earning the megabucks if you want to. I assume your also against high pay for actors, sports stars and musicians?
brc
2 Mar 13 at 6:56 pm
Fuck off “Jeff”, you clown. Reciting the same old worthless crap one can get from any useless leftwing blog in Australia… it’s, it’s all about “da inequalities”.
Jc
2 Mar 13 at 6:57 pm
What does that imply for contract termination procedure in your view?
Fisky
2 Mar 13 at 6:57 pm
It’s even worse than that. The most poisonous trouble-makers can get away with murder and drive the good people out of an organization, but to do anything about them requires you to run the whole legal/HR/union gauntlet. Then you are subjected to the spectacle of capricious bullies suddenly turning on the “pwoar oppwessed wucker” routine, to the sympathetic nods of their enablers.
If you take unfair dismissal off the table (or at least wind it back considerably), there won’t be any need for bad employers angling at constructive dismissal to make their staff miserable. If they don’t want someone on their team, they can terminate and pay whatever severance is owed. On the other hand, it will be easier for good managers to clean out the toxic waste in an organization. So you’d expect less bullying all round, not more.
Fisky
2 Mar 13 at 7:20 pm
I like it even simpler, Jeff.
Read my lips: THERE SHOULD NO MINIMUM WAGE. NONE!
Ant
2 Mar 13 at 7:23 pm
Jeff, if you are going to be a Leftist troll on this blog, you are required, as a matter of procedure, to submit a formal application including your responses to the following questions:
Fisky
2 Mar 13 at 7:44 pm
Jeff
What time is the computer room shit down at the mental asylum you’re a “guest” at.
If you’re able to, please answer Fisky’s questionnaire, as all leftwing idiots are required to as a matter of policy at this blog.
Jc
2 Mar 13 at 7:49 pm
@Jeff,
I agree….. it amazes me that anyone could think that you could create a Democratic Labor Party….
Its a contradiction in terms…
But hey…. lets make sure we attack those robber barons that pillaged NSW, Victoria and Queensland….
I believe they are all members of the Union Party, who represent themselves, and comprise less than 20% of the Australian workforce.
Forget Tasmania…. its under the Pirate Flag of the Brown Bob…
NoFixedAddress
2 Mar 13 at 7:50 pm
Yes, but so what? That doesn’t make Freeman’s assertions correct.
Yes, Workchoices didn’t deregulate. But Freeman’s claims are just wrong.
Milton von Smith
2 Mar 13 at 8:03 pm
You’re an independent thinker and anal-yzer? You can tell from the first few comments you’ve made picking up all the leftwing talking points from third rate blogs.
Who mentioned the DLP, Jeff you clown.
Here we go, it’s all about da Catholics.
Jc
2 Mar 13 at 8:15 pm
@Fisky 7.44
May I suggest some further questions
Do you require electricity?
Do you require transport?
Can you provide 100% of your food requirements from your own legal land?
Are you concerned about future generations?
Can you kill an animal or catch a fish to provide the most concentrated form of human food for yourself?
Do you agree with single species fish catch in Australian maritime waters?
Do you agree with throwing away 80% of maritime catch to satisfy criminal species laws in Australia?
Do you hug trees?
Do you think bats take precedence over humans?
Kind Regards
NFA
NoFixedAddress
2 Mar 13 at 8:20 pm
@Fisky…
suggestions for Jeff
NoFixedAddress
2 Mar 13 at 8:20 pm
I am with Ant, I think they should bring back many of the aspects of WorkChoices, but that won’t happen. I don’t really get why Steve would be just happy with Abetz’s commitment to do very little in the area of IR. To think that the Coalition won’t have AWA’s as a policy this year is very disappointing.
Andrew
2 Mar 13 at 9:28 pm
Jeff, thank you for that trip down Amnesia Lane.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that term used by anyone under the age of about 80. But I bet the present-day DLP would be thrilled to think someone out there is still calling them that. Even if it is a bit like that poor Japanese chappie on that island who didn’t realise WWII was actually over.
Good heavens. Are you sure you’re not Cardinal Gilroy speaking from beyond the grave?
No, I guess not. Nice thought, though.
Philippa Martyr
2 Mar 13 at 11:10 pm
Jeff
At the moment people seem to want to see a conservative government take over. That includes “workers” though that term is a bit old hat a bit condescending somehow, why don’t we just say Australians. A lot of Australians want to see a conservative government again for various reasons.
candy
2 Mar 13 at 11:21 pm
The workers did not stop the groupers, they were stopped by people like Evatt resulting in the split the party.
Then the workers who voted for the DLP kept the ALP out of power for a couple of decades.
Rather like the workers who backed Howard and kicked out the ALP for a decade.
Poor Old Rafe
2 Mar 13 at 11:25 pm
I think we need to stop and realise an employer can do whatever the flying fuck they like with their own money. It’s that damn simple. I personally think unions need to be banned just like corporate trusts are.
James
2 Mar 13 at 11:42 pm
There were two splits in ALP in the 1950s: 1955 in Victoria and 1957 in Qld.
The majority of ALP members and ALP branches in Victoria along with
51 MPs including 14 ministers and a State Premier were to switch to the DLP.
The old DLP was the first Australian political party to promote:
• An end to the White Australia policy
• Producer/worker cooperatives
• Enterprise profit sharing
• Responsible environmental protection
• Industrial democracy
• The vote for 18 year olds
• Equal pay for equal work
• Equity in education funding
• Decentralisation of government
• Family tax splitting
• Support for life
• Capital Grants for family homes
• Portability of superannuation
• Diversification in trade
• Low interest loans for small business
Jim Rose
2 Mar 13 at 11:59 pm
James
Unions without legislative protections are basically an an example of a right to free association. So they shouldn’t be banned.
Just remove all protections that they have vis a vis employers. That would certainly sort them out.
Jc
3 Mar 13 at 12:02 am
I wonder if anyone has come on the site as a hostile visitor, stuck around and learned something?
Poor Old Rafe
3 Mar 13 at 12:04 am
“Business”nas a group welched on making th case for workchoices or even raising funding for a proper ad campaign. As such they need to wear the stupid legislation for a couple more years. Next time they might even fight union stupidity rather than just rolling over and letting Kevin tickle their belly.
brc
3 Mar 13 at 12:06 am
Unions can be good, they used to do health and welfare, they could properly protect workers by providindg advice on job opportunies, training and legal aid for workers with genuine grievances with their employer.
But most of them turned rancide, and became feral, exploting the strike system with the aid of protective legislation dating back over a hundred years.
Poor Old Rafe
3 Mar 13 at 12:07 am
Nothing inherently wrong with unions, free association and all that. It makes sense for workers to join together and negotiate together. It can even work out better for employers if the union can become a single supplier.
What is wrong is that unions are basically run by corrupt bludgers who feed workers a pile of commie claptrap to keep the dues coming in, plus they have a lot of standover tactics that live them more like the mob than a labour supply group focussed on secure, safe employment for their members.
brc
3 Mar 13 at 12:19 am
Fix the Unions: the same obligatory reporting as any other organisation, and remove their monopoly powers.
No change to IR. Perfect!
wreckage
3 Mar 13 at 1:09 am
Aint that the truth! Businesses need to make the case for workchoices and IR de-regulation, expecting the Libs to burn do all the heavy lifting is unfair, and also rather naive. There is a god-damn blueprint on how to do it as well, its called the mining tax and that campaign was still rather shit.
Adam Diver
3 Mar 13 at 8:13 am
Wreckage, that change in reporting also needs to be extended to the Greens etc, as well as the realisation that they are NOT a charity, they are a Political group.
Winston SMITH
3 Mar 13 at 8:33 am
Poor Old Rafe, Alchian and Demsetz identified a number of roles for unions:
Employee unions, whatever else they do, perform as monitors for employees.
Employers monitor employees and similarly employees monitor an employer’s performance. Are correct wages paid on time and in good currency? Usually, this is extremely easy to check.
But some forms of employer performance are less easy to meter and are more subject to employer shirking.
Fringe benefits often are in non-pecuniary, contingent form; medical, hospital, and accident insurance and retirement pensions are contingent payments or performances partly in kind by employers to employees. Each employee cannot judge the character of such payments as easily as money wages.
A specialist monitor-the union employees’ agent-hired by them and monitoring those aspects of employer payment most difficult for the employees to monitor.
Because of economies of scale in monitoring and enforcing such contracts, unions may arise as a contract cost-reducing institution for employees with investments in specific human capital.
In addition to narrow contract-monitoring economies of scale, a union creates a continuing long-term employment relationship that eliminates the last-period (or transient employee) contract-enforcement problem and creates bargaining power (a credible strike threat) to more cheaply punish a firm that violates the contract.
Unions are more likely to exist when the opportunistic cheating problem is greater, namely, when there is more specific human capital present. the first unions were craft unions.
John DiNardo and David Lee compared establishments where unions won and lost union certification elections by a few votes. The effect of unions on these workplaces was zero in terms of productivity and business Failures and on the wages the firm must pay. see http://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/newunion.pdf
Jim Rose
3 Mar 13 at 9:17 am
see http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/05/what-unions-do-how-labor-unions-affect-jobs-and-the-economy for a nice round up which shows my last pots might have been overtaken by events
it quotes David, and Alexandre Mas, “Long-Run Impacts of Unions on Firms: New Evidence from Financial Markets, 1961-1999,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, February 2009.
Jim Rose
3 Mar 13 at 9:23 am
Exactly right, the only problem with unions right now is that they get ridiculous protections under the law. Force them to behave like every other organisation/group/corporation, and report the same way, and they might actually serve a useful purpose in society. As it stands they are nothing but corrupt criminals looking to milk business for every cent and do so with the full backing of the law.
Honestly, I don’t know why business has put up with it for so long. If I owned a business and there was a chance it would unionise I’d shut up shop or simply ‘restructure’ into a new entity and make every worker redundant.
Business needs to fight as dirty as possible, unions have been doing it for years.
MattR
3 Mar 13 at 9:26 am
‘Eliminating unfair dismissal would have been a nice simple first step in the right direction.’
My impression from trolling through a number of unfair dismissal decisions over a fair period is that the Commissioners generally make fair and reasonable decsions. Where the decision is against the employer, it usually either because they have actually been unfair or because they ave failed to observe the fairly simple requiremen ts for due process set out clearly in the FWA Act.
I agree, however, that even if the employer has been blameless, they still have to go through a long, anxious, often expensive and time wasting process to get a decision to that effect.
Des Deskperson
3 Mar 13 at 10:47 am
Just from memory:
Employee reinstated after being sacked for urinating in the loading dock of food processing company.
Three employees reinstated after being sacked for sending pornographic emails using company email and on company time.
Research professor uses taxpayer funds for massages, reflexology, wine, cosmetics, bedding and more is sacked. FWA says he deserves compensation.
Gab
3 Mar 13 at 10:57 am
Speaking as a Liberal member, I am conflicted. My family are trying to survive in a tourist area in small business,where it is well known that the penalty rates have hastened the death knells of numerous small retailers. Now of course the superannuation employer payments will decimate some more this year . Sometimes I think the Liberals are far too timid–but I do recognise that they cannot change the country for the better from opposition,so gaining government is the vital first step. Hope Tony isn;t another timid Fatty o Barrell or Red Ted but is more like a Campbell Newman in action!
Jazza
3 Mar 13 at 3:50 pm
Hope Tony isn;t another timid Fatty o Barrell or Red Ted but is more like a Campbell Newman in action!
Hate to tell ya, Jazza, but Tone won’t come anywhere near Campbell Newman. I’m just hoping he makes a legitimate effort to get rid of the carbon dioxide tax. I very much doubt he’d go as far as making it the key issue and then threatening a double-dissolution election if the senate doesn’t respect the mandate.
John Mc
3 Mar 13 at 3:57 pm
Gab, how many decisions have you read, when and over what period of time??
Des Deskperson
3 Mar 13 at 4:40 pm
Jeff, you imbecile.
No problem with the right to freely associate… off the employer’s premises.
Also no problem with the right to withdraw labor. Of course the firm also has a right to permanent lock out too.
You sanctimonious dickhead Jeff.
Jc
3 Mar 13 at 7:26 pm
Well if he doesn’t, he’s gone after one term.
He’s been banging on about two things since the last election. The ‘Carbon’ tax and Gillard lying.
I don’t think he will be Campbell Newman, but I reckon he has integrity. The ‘Carbon’ tax will go.
jupes
3 Mar 13 at 7:30 pm
I agree, however, that even if the employer has been blameless, they still have to go through a long, anxious, often expensive and time wasting process to get a decision to that effect.
And there lays the problem in the unfair dismissal laws.
sdfc
3 Mar 13 at 7:39 pm
what is to stop an employer reducing the ordinary wage rate to offset the law.
coasian bargaining: if severance pay is mandated, less starting out pay. if super is mandated, cash wages are less. offsets.
Jim Rose
3 Mar 13 at 7:41 pm
see http://conversableeconomist.blogspot.co.nz/2013/02/minimum-wage-and-law-of-many-margins.html for minimum wages but applies to penalty rates too.
Jim Rose
3 Mar 13 at 7:46 pm
Let’s play Pick-A-Case. Spin the wheel, Delvene…and here it stops:
FWC 1268
Unfair dismissal becuase the employee didn’t turn up for work, so the sacked employee takes the company to FWA.
Massive waste of time and money for the employer, but hey, the vexatious Applicant had his day in court…well, when he actually turned up for court.
Gab
3 Mar 13 at 7:48 pm