While a worker needs an employer, a business owner doesn’t necessarily need an employee.
Yet it seems this concept is missed within the Government’s Fair Work Australia legislation currently under review in the Senate. This Bill is based upon the concept employees have rights (which they clearly do but only when work is offered) but the Bill fails to recognise the concept that work is created by an employer, and employee rights are reduced in order for employers to manage their investment.
Under new workplace law the Government is telling the risk-taking employer: “You can take the risk, but we don’t trust you to treat your employees well and we shall have our union mates check on you whenever they like”.
The assumption the Minister and the labour movement make, and indeed prophesise, is Australia still has mass employment workplaces. In reality mass employers disappeared as industries were exported overseas. Supposedly (in these phantom workplaces) there remains the master/servant mentality where management try to wring every last piece of respect and effort from a worker – therefore we need legislation to ensure workers have rights.
The inconvenient truth about this false paradigm is the clear majority of workplaces in Australia are small or micro businesses and can’t be successful under a master/servant employment arrangement. It is a false premise to suggest employers mistreat their most important assets. So this Fair Work Australia Bill is nothing more than payback from the Labor Government for the union movement’s support with electioneering. This shows scant respect for the engine room of the economy – small business.
Since Prime Minister Keating finally modernised the Australian workplace some 15 years ago we have had years of economic sunshine. When Howard introduced Workplace Agreements during his first term, employees were for the first time able to negotiate their own work arrangements. During that time Australia had significant growth in new business start ups, which in turn led to increased employment opportunities.
Employers create jobs – not governments or unions. The inconvenient truth from this time was unions began to become irrelevant if they did not provide increased services to attract members. And in fact, union membership halved. It halved because the days of confrontation were long exported along with industries and employers sick of the restrictions placed upon their investments.
The Howard Government won four elections promising to disband the corrupt “Go Away Money” regime (more commonly called Unfair Dismissal), which is simply unaffordable for a small business. Yet this mandate was ignored by the Labor Party and the Senate. To prevent being exposed to Unfair Dismissal claims by serial claimants, small business employers stopped creating work opportunities and casualised their work force. Ironically, Unfair Dismissal and the subsequent work force casualisation diminished the security of employment for workers.
WorkChoices threatened people’s basic sense of job security – a sense of security ignored by the Howard Government. This fear allowed the unions to once again have a purpose and voice which ultimately lead to Howard’s downfall.
With the threat of industrial litigation about to come back, the equal and opposite reaction is less job opportunities. Right now we have the lowest unemployment rate for decades; new entry for small businesses are at the highest levels for decades; we have young people in demand to join the workforce; we have skill shortages and (prior to the current economic conditions) vacancy rates unheard of within many lifetimes. Why would you want to change a system creating those opportunities?
The most divisive and fundamentally flawed propaganda campaign was washed over the community during the last few years creating a belief we are back in the master/servant era.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. But the union movement saw the opportunity – as Howard overextended his power – to reclaim their own slab of power. As a result, they have been rewarded significantly by the Labor Government on their investment. There was little evidence of widespread corrupt employer practices, yet the union campaign told us differently to the extent the words ‘workplace agreement’ became the words of political hate. Never mind Australia had been using them for many years without complaint. This is what propaganda campaigns do – they isolate and promote fear.
So now it is payback time and the Rudd Government has delivered significantly for the union movement – their financial benefactor. The Fair Work Australia Bill takes us back pre-Keating; it takes us back to where unions have right of entry to breach privacy and freedom of association laws; it takes us back to confrontation; it takes us back to pattern bargaining and other revenue raising for the union movement … but most importantly it takes us back to unemployment.
The inconvenient truth for the Government and the union movement with their fellow workers’ rights advocates is this Bill will place reservation within a future investor thinking about entering the market as an employer. Why bother? With reduced employers in the small business market we will have reduced investment; reduced opportunity and reduced jobs. Rights at work diminish very quickly when there is no employer to provide those rights.
A study of the Fair Work Australia Bill provides the evidence of a return to the master/servant thinking; it provides evidence of reducing an employer’s right to manage a workforce fairly and with privacy; it provides overwhelming evidence of an increase in union power; and it provides a guide to how employment opportunities will diminish. As union power increases so do employer costs, compliance and worry. In the long run the “why bother” mantra will return to small business psyche.
The Senate can provide a balance to the legislation and as the technicians of the Parliament they must accept this responsibility. They must see-saw the balance of fairness back to the centre of workplace relations and embrace their mandate to do so.
