En Passant

WorkChoices is dead, buried, cremated.

Tony Abbott, leader of the Opposition, trying to inter a policy which destroyed the previous Coalition Government.

It isn’t.  Labor’s Fair Work Act retains most of the worst elements of WorkChoices. While some call it WorkChoices Lite Labor’s industrial laws are, apart from some changes, WorkChoices disguised.

Here are some of the similarities.

WorkChoices outlawed what is called “pattern bargaining”.  This is just spreading good agreements (real wage increases and better conditions for example) from one enterprise to others throughout the industry, backed up by industrial action if needed.

Labor’s version of WorkChoices too bans this type of bargaining.   It does this because enterprise bargaining necessarily weakens workers ability to win better pay and conditions as compared to wider bargaining.  In other words Labor kept Howard’s ban so bosses can screw workers more.

Labor has kept Howard’s limits on what can be included in agreements.  Thus, for example, employers can’t agree to collect bargaining fees from non-unionists.  Environmental and social matters are also banned from agreements.

One of the main features of WorkChoices was that it limited the right of unions to enter onto work sites. Labor’s Fair Work Act keeps these entry restrictions in a modified form.  

The main point is that it is employers who decide the details of entry of officials.  So this makes it much harder for unions to service members, recruit new members and organise activities in defence of their workers.  Again Labor is on the bosses’ side.

The Act also keeps Howard’s secret ballots. These are not mechanisms for democracy. Delays through secret ballots conservatise the process and allow the employer, the media and the Government to pressure workers.

Sometimes strike action needs to happen immediately (eg over safety issues the bosses refuse to address). The real democratic alternative is mass meetings in which workers get to hear a range of arguments about striking or not striking and take a decision then and there about how to respond to whatever the issue or issues are.  Those who do not attend are giving proxy rights to those who do and are bound by the decisions.

WorkChoices had fines for unprotected action.  Labor’s Fair Work Act keeps these fines. It also bans strike pay.

The Fair Work Act also kept Howard’s minimum 4 hour loss of pay for “unauthorised” stop work meetings.  No stoppage to my mind is unauthorised.  This is a way of intimidating workers not to meet on important and suddenly developing issues or impose bans and the like. Labor is on the side of the bosses.

Finally the Government has kept the Australian Building and Construction Commission.  The ABCC has powers that are draconian and do not apply in any other industry.  Building and construction workers should be treated like every other worker.

The ABCC is not there to clean up the industry – no successful prosecutions of workers came out of the Cole Royal Commission – but to tame militant building unions from winning better pay and conditions.

It is on Gillard’s watch that building worker Ark Tribe faces six months in jail for not attending a hearing with the ABCC over a union safety meeting.

All in all Labor’s Fair Work Act is much like Howard’s hated WorkChoices. That’s why Tony Abbott says he can live with it.

Of course he really wants to extend it further, and give the bosses more ‘flexibility’. But he won’t say that in the run up to the election.

Let’s be clear. If the economy worsens as the global economy goes into a double dip recession, both sides will attack our living standards and our unions in the name of profits.

The way to defeat WorkChoices is to defeat Labor’s copy – Fair Work –  through strike action.