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Wednesday, 2 November 2011 / 23 comments
Delegitimising unions in the great game of labour v capital
by Bernard Keane It may not look it, but there are strong links between the Occupy protests here and overseas, and more formal political debate and public discourse, which naturally has been dominated by the Qantas dispute. And not just in the vague sense that both deal with the economy, or capitalism, or markets.
Let’s be clear about the long-term business agenda in Australia regarding industrial relations. It’s an agenda aimed not at improving productivity — as I and others have incessantly showed, the last round of IR reform led to a drop in labour productivity — but a more self-interested one aimed at reducing labour costs and neutering unions.
Business is quite tolerant of trade unions, as long as they do nothing that inconveniences business or increases labour costs. They can even be a useful form of alternative pressure on governments when industries set about rent-seeking. Neutered unions are quite acceptable. Real ones, that aggressively represent the interests of their members, aren’t. And ones that actually take industrial action, in particular, are regarded as outright enemies of business.
This is the ultimate thrust of IR reform — to pathologise industrial action, however legal, however justified. The point is to frame the right to withhold labour as an illegitimate form of economic vandalism, no matter what the circumstances.
Thus the incessant business complaint that the Fair Work Australia framework is too “pro-union” because it allows unions to take industrial action once a number of legal hurdles have been cleared. And the logic of Qantas’s actions on the weekend was to break free of the normal industrial dispute provisions under which it was operating, in which unions could continue to take wholly legal industrial action which (as Fair Work Australia found on Sunday night) did not pose a significant threat to Qantas.
This is business’s particular self-interested contribution to the liberal economic reform project. The IR component of that project, starting in 1993 with the Keating government’s provisions for enterprise bargaining and accelerating in 1996-97 with Peter Reith’s reforms to deliver individual contracts, was to remove the impediments of a centralised bargaining system from a modern, open economy, allowing enterprises to respond to competition more flexibly.
Coupled with globalisation, deregulation and corporate tax cuts, the reform project has delivered a huge increase in the corporate sector’s share of national income — at the expense of labour, as this graph from the Australian Council of Trade Unions shows:
The wage share of national income in Australia has only recently come off historic lows. But on this we’re no different from the United States or the United Kingdom, where wage share has also dropped over the last three decades to historic lows of around 50%.
Australian business clearly doesn’t believe the wage share has fallen low enough. That’s what drives its agenda to go further and undermine collective bargaining, a key part of which is the right to withhold labour, something businesses have been trying to do since the time of the Combination Acts in the early nineteenth century. Australia remains, for its corporate leaders, a “high wage” economy that struggles to compete internationally. For globally-mobile capital, there’s always a lower-wage country somewhere else to move to.
That same global market, however, has been the justification for a massive increase in executive remuneration, which as Prof David Peetz has shown, accelerated in the 1980s but then really took in the late 1990s.
Now, you can look at this from a union perspective and rail about income inequality and overpowerful corporations, or from a corporate perspective and point out that it’s the logic of a global market. And that market is currently delivering strong employment growth and growing income to Australians. But either way, it is driving the growing anti-corporate sentiment in the community, the opposition to further economic reform and the desire to reverse some reforms like privatisation. The Occupy protests are only the most vocal point of this deep and wide community sentiment that corporations get all the benefits of the economic system while the community gets all of the costs.
Where unions have failed is to tap into this sentiment. Capitalism operates most effectively by atomising the individual, by ensuring that an individual’s primary relationships are one-to-one relationships with producers as a consumer, and with employers, as a worker. Traditional systems that establish links cutting across these one-to-one relationships — unions, churches, political parties — have all been in decline in recent decades. Now the internet threatens to establish a different set of relationships and communities at odds with capitalism. But unions still retain some of the power that they once had to disrupt capitalist relationships, which is why business wants to neuter them.
The challenge for unions is to find a way to effectively channel those community concerns. Some of the more politically effective unions, like the Australian Workers Union, would argue that that is exactly what they’ve done through outcomes like the recent steel industry package. They also face an often hostile media environment that reinforces the illegitimacy of industrial action.
Alternatively, the challenge for business is to find a way to address those concerns themselves, to stop the community seeing them as a problem, the beneficiaries of a rigged capitalist game. Continuing to reflexively wage industrial relations wars wouldn’t seem to be the best start in doing that.
Qantas decision: Deputy PM Warren Truss says there is no 'plan B' if Sale Act changes fail
Date
March 4, 2014 - 12:06PM
James Massola
Political correspondent
View more articles from James Massola
Qantas ownership relaxed
The government announces its intention to allow greater foreign investment in Qantas, raising the possibility the airline may split into domestic and international carriers.
Transport Minister Warren Truss has admitted to Coalition MPs that the government does not have a ''plan B'' if its attempt to repeal part of the Qantas Sale Act fails to pass the Senate.
In a meeting of the Coalition Party room on Tuesday, veteran Queensland Senator Ron Boswell asked Mr Truss what the government's plan was if the legislation – which Labor, the Greens and the Palmer United Party have already vowed to oppose – was blocked in the Senate.
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss says there is no 'plan B' if Qantas Sale Act fails to get through Senate.Photo: Andrew Meares
Mr Truss reportedly then told his National Party colleague ''there is no plan B''.
After the meeting, Senator Boswell told Fairfax Media he was happy with the answer he had received, though other Coalition MPs expressed surprise at the comment.
''We can put it up and point out that if you block it you will cost jobs,'' he said.
''We can't expect these people [Qantas] to compete with other airlines that are government backed.''
Qantas called on the federal government to take immediate action to assist the flagging airline, including via a debt guarantee.
As Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared on Tuesday that his government was determined to "liberate Qantas from the shackles of the Qantas Sale Act", the airline stepped up criticism of what it called an uneven playing field that allowed Virgin Australian unlimited access to foreign capital.
''We have consistently said that removal of foreign ownership provisions that apply uniquely to Qantas is an important longer term objective to create a fair and free aviation market in Australia,'' the airline said in a statement.
''However, it is clear that such a move would have limited chance of passing through the Senate.
''If this proposal by the government to change the Qantas Sale Act is not passed, we would expect the government and the Parliament to consider alternative measures to balance the unlevel playing field in Australian aviation.''
The Abbott government resolved on Monday night that it would move to repeal part three of the Qantas Sale Act, which limits foreign airline ownership of Qantas to 35 per cent and a single foreign shareholder to 25 per cent.
The Act also governs where airplane maintenance takes place and the changes would allow some maintenance jobs to go overseas, a move heavily criticised by the union movement.
The changes, if passed, would effectively allow up to 100 per cent foreign ownership of the airline's domestic business but would ensure the 49 per cent ownership cap on the airline's international arm remains in place if Qantas is to remain an Australian carrier.
Mr Abbott brushed aside suggestions the airline could still be handed a debt guarantee – an idea government has gone cold on – and stepped up pressure on Labor and the Greens to pass the proposed changes to the Act to ensure Qantas had a ''strong, long-term future as one of the world's great airlines''.
''The interesting thing is that the Labor Party's answer here appears to be a subsidy. We want to give Qantas its freedom; they want to give Qantas a subsidy. We want to give Qantas a hand up; they want to give Qantas a hand out. Basically, the Labor Party is reverting to cheque book government,'' he said.
Treasurer Joe Hockey confirmed the government's opposition to a debt guarantee had hardened in recent weeks.
''We are not writing out blank cheques,'' he told ABC radio. ''There are a lot of companies in Australia that would love to have a multibillion-dollar unsecured loan from the federal government.
''We are not doing that for an individual company. We are not going to guarantee billions of dollars of debt as every small business in Australia would probably want as well.''
Mr Hockey criticised Qantas for claiming yesterday that the carbon price was not a major factor in its financial woes.
''If a $106 million carbon tax bill is immaterial, well, that is certainly not going to help with the justification for a multibillion-dollar loan facility,'' he said.
Palmer United Party leader and Fairfax MP Clive Palmer, whose party may gain the balance of power in the Senate after July 1, released a statement on Tuesday saying his party would oppose the government's proposed changes.
Mr Palmer said his party was ''committed to protecting and defending the rights of Australians to have a national carrier owned by Australians''.
''We can't just sell off assets when we're in trouble and Australia needs to keep soveriegn assets for Australian people,'' he said.
''It is a worldwide brand and the government has a moral obligation to make sure we keep it in Australian hands.''
He blamed the Qantas management and board for the airline's problems.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the government had been "flying kits" about the future of the airline for three months while the airline had announced last week 5000 jobs would go.
''How do you negotiate with a government who says there's my way or the highway? They've only got one plan which is to allegedly free Qantas, how on earth do you free an airline by selling it off overseas, by sacking people,'' he said.
But shadow treasurer Chris Bowen said Labor was prepared to work with the government on scrapping restrictions such as rules preventing foreign airlines from buying more than 35 per cent of Qantas or any one foreign person owning more than 25 per cent, but said removing the Qantas Sale Act altogether ''goes too far''.
''We're not going to allow the important 51-49 per cent threshold [on foreign ownership] to go,'' Mr Bowen told ABC radio. ''Qantas' status as the national carrier is very important. It is a different case, a special case.
''This is policy on the run. Qantas have the right to be very angry with the government today. This is a government that doesn't know how to do business with business – sending mixed signals, backgrounding, thought bubbles, speculation, leaks.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...hanges-fail-20140304-341e4.html#ixzz2uxPb9ENt
