Electrical workers employed by the ACT Electricity and Water, through their union, have entered into an enterprise agreement with their management about wages and conditions. They have lodged it with the Industrial Relations Commission. There is no cogent reason why that agreement should not go ahead and the parties who entered into it should be able to rely upon it.
However, the Minister for Industrial Relations, Wayne Berry, does not like it. He says that it runs counter to an agreement with 15 other unions about wages and conditions throughout the ACT Public Service. He thinks that the ACTEW agreement could jeopardise that agreement.
At Mr Berry’s instigation, it appears that the ACT Cabinet will overturn the enterprise agreement.
Mr Berry’s position is at odds with the general trend in industrial relations to break down monolithic structures and to enable and empower workers in given enterprises to work out their own conditions with their own managements.
What does it matter that the ACTEW agreement is at odds with conditions elsewhere in the ACT public service? That is precisely how it should be. The efficiencies and savings of enterprise bargaining can only be gained if each enterprise or section of government service can work out their own agreements. A key issue in one section of government might be of no moment in another. With enterprise agreements, different trade-offs can be made in different areas to the mutual gain of management and workers. The bigger the bargaining unit the less chance there is for productive agreements.
The ACT branch assistant secretary for the Public Sector Union, Ross Campbell, has said the ACTEW agreement would bring into question the Government’s ability to manage a central wage-fixing process for the ACT Government Service. Well, good. The ACT Government does not need a central wage-fixing process. Efficiency is better served with different agreements for different areas. Mr Campbell said the ACTEW agreement could result in unions filing myriad agreements with “”very different and inequitable results”. Difference does not mean inequity. It would be a good thing if there were a myriad of agreements to reflect the working conditions of the very different areas of work in the ACT Government Service. Different agreements are more likely to result in equity not inequity. Equity does not necessarily result from uniformity. In fact the contrary is more likely.
It appears that Mr Berry’s position is a result more of a power game than a desire to do justice to workers in ACTEW. If they and their representatives have worked out an agreement it can only be inequitable to overturn it. Overturning it cannot be in their best interests. The only people who benefit out of a monolithic process requiring uniformity of conditions throughout the service are the officials of big unions. Having control over a very large centralised wage-fixing process can only be in the interest of the union officials involved.
Australia and the ACT have to move away from centralised agreements and towards decentralised agreements like the ACTEW agreement that reflect the concerns of those in that enterprise and can deliver efficiencies in those enterprises which can be partly passed on in the form of higher wages and better conditions. In doing so, managements and governments have to resist the stepping-stone mentality under which workers and unions pick only the best of other agreements and demand they be incorporated in their agreements upon renewal. Unions and workers are recognising that it is a give-and-take process. It would be beneficial if the ACT Government did the same thing. There is no joy in uniformity. There is no efficiency, and in the long term it means lower wages and worse conditions.
Mr Berry should back off imposing monolithic arrangements that only suit officials of large unions to the detriment of workers in individual enterprises like the ACTEW. If the workers and management of ACTEW have worked out an agreement it should be enforced. They know what is best for them; Mr Berry and the officials of the giant PSU do not.