THE Minister for Industrial Relations, Wayne Berry, is quite right: the ACTEW-Electrical Trades Union enterprise agreement is “”a cosy little deal”. But isn’t that what enterprise bargaining is all about?
The cosiness is to be welcomed. Workers and management in individual enterprises come to an agreement for their mutual benefits without outside interference. Cosiness means a huddling together to exclude the outside cold. ACTEW likes the deal. It says it will save $500,000 a year. The ETU like the deal because its workers will get pay rises. Mr Berry does not like the deal because it does not conform with Government wages policy and does not conform to uniform government-wide working conditions and pay clauses.
That is the only reason Mr Berry has given for using his ministerial power to block the agreement. There is no other reason. ACTEW management, the workers and the public can only benefit from it.
The only people who will not benefit are the union officials of other unions in Canberra. They will gradually lose their power base as workers in individual enterprises do their own bargaining, and they have been put on the spot by this agreement. They will be asked by their workers why can’t they have similar pay rises in return for more flexible working arrangements?
Mr Berry’s action has resulted in union bans which have left people without power and has prevented people from moving into new houses.
His argument that the Government only learned of the “”cosy deal” at the 11th hour is nonsense. A fellow Minister, Terry Connolly, signed it in his capacity as Minister for Urban Services. Moreover, having earlier made the idiotic decision to force ACTEW into the general government wage process the Government should have policed it. It would have been far better, of course, to have given ACTEW the wage-fixing autonomy its corporatised status warrants, then none of this would have happened; any ACT deal would have been as relevant to the government service as a deal done by any private company.
Much has been made of the factional nature of the dispute. The ETU has been called a right-wing union, whatever that means, and Mr Connolly, who signed the agreement, is from the right faction of the Labor Party. Mr Berry is from the left, so are the other unions that oppose the agreement. However, the factional line-up of the protagonists is of less import than the nature of the dispute.
The dispute reflects Mr Berry’s palaezoic view of industrial relations. That view is still grounded in discredited industry-wide arrangements, fixed relativities between job classifications, gain-sharing across an industry (in this case government) and a raft of “”disability allowances”.
Mr Berry is peeved that the ETU has junked that view. It has made a deal directly with its enterprise, ACTEW, irrespective of what happens elsewhere in the industry. It has scrapped many disability allowances in favour of flat (but larger) pay rates. It has bases its pay rates upon productivity within its enterprise irrespective of what other people are being paid elsewhere. In other words, it is being flexible and relevant. It is basing its pay and conditions upon what its members produce for the enterprise they work for.
The old view of industrial relations is inefficient and to the detriment of workers and management alike. The only people its suits are full-time union officials who get to play a greater role co-ordinating industry-wide bargaining.
Mr Berry has butted in where he was neither wanted or needed. What would have happened if he had not butted in? The agreement would have gone ahead; the workers would have got more money; the ACTEW would have made savings; the public would have those savings passed on with lower prices; and no-one would be without power.
Of course, a few officials in other unions might have their nose out of joint and Mr Berry himself might have lost some of their political support.
That gives us some idea of why he butted in and how totally contrary to the public interest his interference has been. The public should remember that at election time. Under Hare-Clark, of course, it will be easy for Labor voters to still vote Labor without voting for Mr Berry.