Australia’s has a record low level of industrial disputation, and record low levels of union membership. Areas of legitimate industrial dispute have been narrowed; courts have confected reasons to narrow it further. Workers have also endured several years of wage stagnation — though that is purely coincidence, according to a number of economic commentators.
The Reserve Bank’s solution for wage stagnation — though it forecasts only a “gradual” rise in growth — is that, in the words of governor Phillip Low, “it would be a good thing” if “workers [were] prepared to ask for larger wage rises.” That, of course, is what unions exist to do, in part — unless it’s the SDA, in which case you raison d’etre, apparently, is to undermine your own members’ wages.
Lowe’s prescription — hypocritical given the RBA’s own stance on pay for its employees — ignores the context of workplace power, which has shifted over the last three decades in favour of corporations. Centralised wage fixing has been abandoned, industry-wide bargaining banned except in certain cases, the matters that can be disputed have been narrowed (employers want to narrow them still further); the current Fair Work Act operates to dump workers back to award levels if employers decide to abandon bargaining. And unions that aggressively pursue the interests of their workers are demonised as militant and corrupt. At the same time, corporations have become larger and more concentrated, giving them greater relative power in labour markets for particular skills compared to the less concentrated economy of the 1980s.
One of the key flaws in the “wage growth is coming soon” argument is the assumption that this power relationship will magically rebalance in favour of workers. But even when labour markets tighten, corporations seek to use their political influence to prevent the benefits flowing through to workers. Witness the actions of mining companies to relentlessly attack unions during the mining investment boom when companies were competing against each other for workforces for major mining construction projects, bidding up the price of engineers, maritime workers and other specialist talent. Australia was a “high cost place to do business”, they complained; Australian construction costs were far in excess of what they should be; politicians were told we urgently needed industrial relations reform to undermine the power of unions to take advantage of strong demand for labour.
For the same reason, corporations and their representative groups like the Business Council and Australian Industry Group continue to demand industrial relations reform despite record low wages growth and industrial dispute levels. They will always push for more power over workers. Their existing power will not be readily surrendered. The relationship between workers and corporations will not automatically rebalance in favour of the former as if driven by some natural law.
Labor has promised to give the Fair Work Commission greater powers to intervene in extended disputes and will end the ability of employers to abandon existing agreements, as part of a suite of IR changes. The Australian Council of Trade Union’s Change The Rules campaign wants to go much further and end casualisation and the growth of independent contracting and curb work visas. The CFMEU’s John Setka — fresh from victory over the government on its blackmail charge — wants a significant easing of requirements for industrial action and a significant expansion of union right of entry. But none of these changes will filter through into better wage outcomes without more industrial disputation. More strikes, more clashes between employers and workers, more workplace bad blood.
We’ve spent thirty years regarding strikes as a profound evil. That’s perhaps understandable given the staggering level of days lost to strike action in the 1980s, when it was perfectly normal for the economy to lose 1.5 million days a year to strikes (in 2017, in a workforce more than double the size, about 140,000 days were lost). But a higher level of strikes appears to be the only way the imbalance between workers and corporations will be partially restored, unless we expect corporations to happily give up the power they’ve carefully built up since the 1980s.
Don’t you know Bernard it is illegal to strike? This has been the decisions of the FWC over many years. You have to go through a long protracted process of negotiation – all to favour the employer – and you can be effectively fobbed off for years. This is what has happened to the public sector . The EAs that have been signed have been shitty for the employees and the Home Affairs guys are waiting earnestly for a decision by the FWC after 5 years without a pay rise. This is the deliberat result of action whereby the CPSU – the union representing the workers in the public sector – have had to endure years of bad faith negotiations by both their agenceis, the DIBP and the ABF (Now Home Affairs), and the Public Service Commission. Any article for negoation had to be cleared by both the agency and the PSC. Now the matter has gone to the FWC but it took years to do so and the strikes that Bernard speaks of only occurred after several years of negotiation. They were illegal and unprotected. I can’t see a wealthy benefactor bailing them out. The CFMEU does but the CPSU won’t. I don’t know what Bernard is asking for but it is vain at best and more in hope than anything constructive.
None could disagree about the legal impediments and cultural opprobrium heaped on workers & unions – thanks a heap HawKeating.
The article mentions that today’s workforce is virtually double that of the 80s, when 1.5M days were ‘lost’ (! where did they go, could they be found again?), how come the obvious connection is not made as to the major reasons for stagnation?
1) the abolition of manufacturing as a “good thing” leading to mass, condition averse, service work,
2) regarding paper shuffling as valid employment – for the short period before automation obviates it which brings
3) a dog-eat-dog society.
Not as if this is a mysterious or an accidental occurrence.
2)
One of your better ones Bernard. A worker’s labour is the only thing he has to bargain with and if he cannot withdraw it he has no power at all. The boss of course can lock the door as he pleases. I have been the victim of strikes in my own business in the past, and some were stupid. However, safety and fair conditions are vital. My dad often aid that the reason for the rise of militant unionism was the way employers acted in the depression. I have worked where unions had t0protect the migrants workers and they did. Not now, they have no ability. Unions did not countenance wage theft and there was government backup for them in these matters.
What a shocking state of affairs…we desperately need to instigate the unions ‘Change the Rules’ strategy.
If the next Labor government does not do so, the majority of the workforce is headed for serfdom…the situation deserves urgent action!
I wonder if this “wage stagnation crisis” isn’t being overblown?
With “all these jobs created” (as this government and it’s pimps like to spout in distraction) :- surely all we have to do is work three or four of them to make the kind of living (including buying a home) we once could on one?