Within the next week or so the Government will be putting its new industrial relations legislation before the Parliament. It has stated that it will be a major priority and Parliament will sit through until it is dealt with … presumably either by being passed with only acceptable amendments or rejected in a way that will enable it to be a triger for a double dissolution.
The legislation will change the industrial-relations climate of the country, and it needs changing. But the Government should not take the country from one extreme to the other: from the extreme of union domination and inflexibility to the extreme of employer domination and flexibility that results in erosion of fundamental rights.
The Coalition has been right to signal industrial relations as a key inhibitor of efficiency and improved economic performance. And in proposing reforms it has been right to point to large centralised unions and overly detailed award provisions as blocking changes in workplaces that would bring greater productivity and therefore greater wealth to both employers and employees. Many union officials will not like that. They have built careers out of requiring vast detail in awards so they will have a role in dealing with any workplace change, however trivial, often to the detriment of the workers they purport to represent.
However, the Government must be careful not to strip back awards too far. Aside from playing into the hands of union officialdom, it will be self-defeating. The aim of reform must not be a narrow, ideological one, but one of higher living standards for more Australians. That does not mean extra money only. It means more productive enterprises that can give employees better lives. And better lives should not just be measured in money.
In particular, good leave provisions are essential to a decent society. They need not be prescribed in the arcane detail of existing awards, but there must be fair and decent minimums. Reasonable recreation, sick, compassionate and long-service leave are hallmarks of a decent society. Australia should avoid the American and Japanese models where workers snactch barely a week’s leave a year. This in inimical to good family life and sane living; and may indeed be bad economics as society has to pick up the pieces of people spending too long at work.
The Government should ignore, for example, yesterday’s (CORRECT) plea by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Australia’s largest employer group, that employees be allowed to cash-out minimum benefits such as sick leave, long-service leave and superannuation.
On the other hand, the chamber’s other call … for unions to butt out unless they are specifically called in … is a sound one. But if the legislation goes through, the employers’ request will come with a responsibility, to use their new flexibility with good sense, or there will be a backlash … just as union entrenchment of power in the 13 years of Labor government is receiving a backlash now.
Morever, the most flexible industrial-relations regime in the world, will not of itself make a more productive economy. That requires enlightened management that empowers and encouranges employees to do a good job.