As easily as changing a piece on a chessboard, the big hand of the union has swiped away our Prime Minister and replaced him with a left wing former trade union lawyer.
The relief of losing Rudd is offset with a sense of unease that comes with the realization; instead of being ruled by a government that thinks it knows what is best for us, we are ruled by unions that know what is best for them.
What was once infuriating may now just be downright scary.
Naturally, curiosity abounds regarding our new female leader. What sort of leader will she be; Maggie Thatcher or Helen Clarke? An iron lady or archetypal woman? Will she save our money to make our lives better or will she spend it to make herself feel good?
Gillard’s soothing presentation may not be enough to cultivate a decent relationship with the Australian people, particularly when it began on such illegitimate terms. If we feel sufficiently robbed of our democracy, the foundations of resentment will be laid within our national psyche.
The hypocrisy grates; if only our leaders were bound by the same rules that bind the rest of us! If the industrial relations policy Gillard inflicted on every workplace in the country was applied to the government, Labour might be in breach of its own laws.
So when will we see Kevin 07 put in his unfair dismissal application?
How would the government go about collecting the evidence to justify his dismissal, documenting detail about how many warnings were given and whether Rudd had sufficient opportunity to respond to these warnings? What would they do if a Commissioner reinstated him?
If the Government was ruled by it’s own laws, the mining dispute would have ended two weeks after it began; the outcome would most likely have been arbitrated by Fair Work Australia the minute any damage spread to the economy. Rudd would have probably received orders to drop all his demands and go back to square one and consult properly before implementing change.
The new IR system is starting to bite Australian businesses. Ms Gillard, so far, has been a good mother duck for the unions. When unions show their ugly side she has clucked soothingly at the electorate. The victory over the Teacher’s Union, really, just doesn’t count. She’s going to have to pick a side; will it be the unions or the rest of us?
Unfair dismissal applications have flooded in since Gillard’s IR laws were introduced. Fair Work Australia’s figures for the first three quarters of the year show that we are on track to have 11,508 applications in the first year of the new laws. There are no figures for the amount of ‘go away’ money being paid, but I estimate a median of about 13 weeks pay. If we assume all workers are on the minimum wage ($543.78 per week), then this amounts to over 81 million per year of go away money coming of businesses bottom line. This is a very conservative estimate, as hardly anyone is on the minimum wage, so the real figure is likely to be more than double that at 160 million. This exceeds the prediction of 120 million I made in my 2009 article in The Australian, prior to the new laws coming in.
Just as we try to dodge the possibility of falling into another economic crisis, we are beginning to feel the delayed effects of an industrial relations system whose sole purpose of design was to help unions prosper.
Business is struggling with compliance. A system so confusing, not even those administering it are able to advise business owners on its application in the workplace. A policy so confusing, not even Gillard herself knew it allowed unions to collect bargaining fees, until I pointed it out, upon which she said she had corrected the supposed oversight. An untruth, for the legislation still allows unions to collect bargaining fees off workers, as long as the worker has ‘agreed’ in a contract. However, in practice it is the employers that are now paying these fees for workers…directly to the union official of course.
Just trying to find out which award to pay staff on can be a nightmare that has no escape. Where there is doubt about which award applies, FWA absolutely refuse to direct or give advice about which award should be used. The business owner is forced to guess and if they get it wrong, face prosecution and fines of more than $30k per breach.
In this quandary, business owners turn to lawyers who ring FWA to ascertain which award should be used, for the lawyers only to be told to seek advice from a lawyer! It’s a running joke within Fair Work Australia; how all the lawyers are ringing up to seek advice from people with three weeks training.
Recent agreements approved by Fair Work Australia prove the warnings about wage blowouts in militant industries were real. 28.5% increases over 3.5 years in the Oil and Gas industry, qualifies, I think, as a wages blowout.
Under Gillard’s legislation, union membership and power is enjoying an unprecedented ascension. Recent ABS figures show a massive increase in membership in the last two years, with 1.8 million workers as union members.
This figure will climb further. The unions are coming. Is Business ready? Of course not, they are hopelessly ill equipped to deal with this.
Our economy is a finely balanced dish and when a heavy IR system is the base ingredient, stodginess results.
The challenge for Gillard is to produce a soufflé. Whether she is capable of the light touch that requires, is yet to be seen.
Note; readers who wish to hear about Kevin’s chances in an application should go to the media page and listen to the ABC interview.
