WorkChoices … "is the sort of thing you do, as a government, because it is what you want to do, not because you have to." -- Shaun Carney, Let the tough times roll

It's all happening, just like John Howard intended it to. The Australian Liberal Party stands for nothing if not returning workers to their rightful position as slaves to masters. With few exceptions, all Liberal members in Parliament are slavering over the newfound power the employer class now has over their powerless employees. It's taken them a hundred years to return to a hundred years ago, but they've finally made it.

What a great example is this (all italics mine):

Talk-back radio was flooded with calls after the Opposition last week revealed that fabric chain Spotlight asked Coffs Harbour woman and lifelong Liberal voter Annette Harris to sign away penalty rates worth $90-a-week for compensation of just two cents an hour. Harris had taken unpaid leave, which the company treated as a termination, and was offered the new, but lesser, contract on her return. (Meaghan Shaw, Welcome to the new workplace)

But Spotlight's "business ethics" are just the most obvious tip of the iceberg. Read this excerpt from Shaun Carney's article (quoted at the beginning of this post.)

On Monday night, Peter McIlwain, the head of the Office of the Employment Advocate, the statutory body with which employers must register individual work contracts, formally known as Australian Workplace Agreements, told a Senate committee that every agreement lodged under the new laws had removed at least one pre-existing award condition. Of the 6263 AWAs lodged, 40 per cent removed public holidays, 64 per cent removed leave loadings and 63 cut penalty rate. Sixteen per cent removed all protected award conditions.

It is interesting to consider for a moment how well the Government might have fared at the last election if it had championed a policy that would produce those sorts of results. When Howard first announced the broad outlines of his workplace-relations reform program a year ago, he responded querulously to charges that workers might suffer a cut in their incomes. "Why would I want to do that?" he said.

Faced with examples such as the employee of the Spotlight fabric company in northern NSW who took unpaid leave and on her return was presented with an AWA that removed entitlements worth $90 a week in return for a rise in her base rate of two cents an hour, the Prime Minister now says that his laws are expressly about generating jobs. He refers approvingly to Spotlight opening up new outlets and cites this as a demonstration of the efficacy of his laws.

Again, this is where the link between prosperity and the individual comes into focus. With decent growth figures pushing the economy along, with unemployment bouncing around 5 per cent, inflation under 3 per cent, company profits sitting at very high levels, the need to cut into pay levels to generate extra employment does not seem all that clear.

It is the sort of thing you do, as a government, because it is what you want to do, not because you have to. That is the truth of WorkChoices: it will, over a relatively short space of time run wage levels down. That does not mean incomes must fall. But it will mean that a lot of workers might have to work longer or at times more convenient to their employer to maintain their income levels.

Workers are now easier to sack. It is now easier to hire people on any rate an employer chooses. It is harder to get a union onto a worksite. It is harder to secure objective, enforceable scrutiny of workplace arrangements. Elements of the less structured form of industrial negotiation that characterised the late 19th century workplace are being reintroduced.

It is no good for the Government to pretend otherwise and that is why the Prime Minister is no longer bothering to try. The laws were designed to produce the results that have been attracting news, such as the woman employed by Spotlight.

What makes this situation unusual in the life of the Government is that it cannot be tricked up, either by the Labor Party or by the Government itself. The Spotlight story will be repeated over and over again. These repetitions might not make the national media but people will learn of them. WorkChoices is not like the Snowy privatisation. It cannot be reversed with a single announcement.

When I was a teenager I thought as a teenager. Politics was boring. But even then, I always took the side of the worker in disputes with employers. Even though I'd never held a job, I knew that the relationship between employee and employer was always going to be loaded in the latter's favour. How could it be otherwise? And who could possibly be so dense as to believe otherwise?

I was fortunate. I missed the 19th century Scrooge era, but my kids evidently are not going to miss the 21st. I had some pretty awful employers but they never treated me the way Howard's employers are treating Australia's workers.

And Teflon John, the most astute politician in anyone's history is that far ahead of everyone, he managed to get his sedition laws passed first. Because to bitch and moan about something like losing "$90-a-week for compensation of just two cents an hour" could easily amount to sedition.

Howard's Way has amounted to Australia's End ... unless the Australian Way finally wakes up and puts an end to Howard. The sooner the better. (Attention AFP & ASIO: I'm referring to an electoral end. We want the little twat around to stand trial for his crimes.)

-- Chet LaMerde