WorkChoices undermining women's equal pay fight: ACTU

Unions say the Federal Government's WorkChoices legislation is leaving women further behind in their fight for equal pay.

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Sharan Burrow will today tell the union's national women's conference in Sydney that the gap between what men and women are paid has widened under the new laws.

She says full-time women on individual workplace awards earn 81 cents for every $1 made by a man, while women on collective agreements are earning 90 cents.

"Six out of 10 women in the private sector are in fact award dependent so by any measure, women's wages have gone backwards at a rate of knots," she said.

Authority denies workplace agreement cover-up

The Federal Government's workplace monitor denies it is refusing to publish details of thousands of collective agreements lodged since the introduction of the fairness test.

The Workplace Authority has blamed the agency's new information technology system for the delay in putting agreements up on the website .

But unions say it is because workers are trading-off benefits despite the fairness test.

Workplace Authority head Barbara Bennett says the details will be displayed shortly, but cannot say whether it will be before the election.

meanwhile...

Unemployment dip sparks interest rate fears

Economists say a lower than expected unemployment rate in September will add to the case for another interest rate rise.

Australia's unemployment rate fell to 4.2 per cent seasonally adjusted last month, the lowest level in 33 years, after economists had expected it to remain steady at 4.3 per cent.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show 13,000 jobs were added to the labour market in September.

HSBC chief economist John Edwards says the low figure will put upward pressure on interest rates.

IRC report critical of WorkChoices

From the ABC

An inquiry by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) says the WorkChoices laws have left many employees feeling insecure and not necessarily led to more jobs.

The inquiry was commissioned by the South Australian Government in March and the IRC in SA took evidence from unions, businesses and employer groups.

Its report, released today, says WorkChoices has left female employees, young workers, the unskilled and low paid feeling more insecure because their bargaining power has been diminished.

It says the legislation has increased the complexity of industrial relations.

Janet Giles from SA Unions says the laws have failed to provide the benefits often claimed.

"The Commission has found today that there is no connection between WorkChoices and the economy. In fact, ordinary working families have lost an awful lot of their entitlements with no gain in the economy to productivity, employment or even the ease and simplification of the system."

Ms Giles says the inquiry was independent and cannot be written off as biased by the Federal Government.

----------------

Gus: Howard wud be over the moon... Mishum accumplished... That was, and is, the purpose of Work Choices... Make workers vulnerable so they work for less money and longer hours, boosting profits and the hugely inflated pay of CEOs and executives... who are themselves on "contracts" — but these "contracts", unlike AWAs, are loaded with huge benefits from stock options to bonuses and lavish expense accounts... with very generous exit clauses... Workers get a "thank you" note in the shape of a boot.

From the ABC

Coalition targets Labor on jobs, union links

...

Mr Hockey has announced the Government will launch a third advertising campaign targeting controversial union figures like Joe McDonald and Kevin Reynolds.

He says the ads are a justified response to Labor's negative campaigning.

"I don't think the Labor Party is in any position to judge us on the credentials of our advertising campaign, when they've been the beneficiaries of the greatest fear campaign ever run by the union movement in Australia," he said.

The new advertisement demands an answer to why outspoken union boss Kevin Reynolds has not been expelled from the Labor Party alongside Joe McDonald.

Mr Hockey admitted at its release that it was a fear campaign, but said it was based on fact.

-----------------

Gus: the fact is the government being in a caretaker mode has NO RIGHT to advertise anything... Only the Liberal Party, the National Party, willing business and enterprises have the right to advertise against the "union" if they wish to do so. The other fact is, in large numbers, a lot more of workers have been disadvantaged by the Liberal "work choices" government policies. The fact is "flexibility" one of the main argument for WorkChoices by the Libs is still included on the Labor Party platform. Work Choices has been designed to hammer workers into the ground and make workers insecure... That's not flexibility: that's exploitation...

'Our fear campaign is based on fact' [Hockey]

Labor says Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey's admission the government is running a fear campaign over ALP union links exposes its fearmongering ahead of the election.

... less than an hour later, Mr Hockey was much more forthcoming, saying that if Labor was to be representative of the community only 20 per cent of frontbenchers should be trade union members.

"Twenty per cent would be members of trade unions and maybe one or two would be trade union officials,'' Mr Hockey said.

He said the coalition "probably would have'' 20 per cent of its cabinet ministers who were former trade unionists.

------------------

Gus: the fact is the present front bench of the Howard Government is a con-agglomerate of nearly (if not more) 60 per cent lawyers... Ergo the Liberal Howard Government never represented the diversity of people and Hockey's argument is bungcrap. The proportion of lawyers in the Australian population is way below one percent... (The number of legal professionals in Australia has jumped nearly 20% over the last five years, taking the total to over 55 000.)

Get rid of Howard and his troops... 

I'll quit if Govt changes WorkChoices: Hockey

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says he will resign as a minister if a re-elected Howard Government makes substantial changes to the WorkChoices legislation.

Labor has been challenging the Coalition to rule out further changes to the controversial industrial relations laws if it wins the election later this month.

During a debate with Labor's deputy leader and industrial relations spokesman Julia Gillard on Channel Seven, Mr Hockey said he was prepared to stake his career on it.

"I will resign as a minister in the Howard Government if there are any substantial changes, or any of the changes that Julia Gillard has just flagged," he said.

-------

Gus: Is this a core or a non-core promise?... And what's the value index on the word "substantial" and the world "any"...?  Should Mr Hockey start getting on his bicycle or should he put his skates on? So many questions! So little time... So many unreal answers from the smiling minister of the jovial brick (see toon above this lot) "designed" to soften the blow from WorkChoices — or whatever its name is at the moment... Can the grain of sand that destroys a ball bearing — and our pay packet (in the case of pork choices) — be called "substantial" or should we expect a full shovel of it?...

Ah, the mysterious subtlety of the English language...  

Kick sand in their faces. Get rid of John Howard. Simple. 

Costello gives WorkChoices guarantee

Treasurer Peter Costello says the Federal Government has no plans to make any changes to its industrial relations laws.

Earlier today Industrial Relations Minister Joe Hockey threatened to resign as a minister in a Howard Government if there were any substantial changes to WorkChoices.

Mr Costello refused to give the same undertaking as Mr Hockey, reaffirming the Government's staunch position on the IR laws.

"I guarantee that we won't be changing WorkChoices - it won't happen, I've told you that," he said.

"The balance that the Government has at the moment is the appropriate balance."

Prime Minister John Howard has thrown his support behind Mr Hockey and has accused Labor of trying to perpetuate a myth that a re-elected Coalition would make big changes to IR laws.

-----------------

Gus: rock solid assurance... fan-bloody-static. After the election Work Choices has a good chance — like a 100 percent chance — of ending like the promises of Abbott, the minister who nearly resigned after his rock solid assurances on Medicare. They became sand between the finger after the elections of 2004... And John Howard kept smiling... After all the porkies since 1996, we should believe nothing.

Kick John Howard out. 

Gerard Henderson writes like a wise old owl that has fallen from his perch, looking for his glasses.

"Sentiment aside, the Harvester Judgment was a deeply flawed decision. The essential problem turned on the fact that Higgins believed that employers, rather than governments, had an obligation to ensure that their employees and their dependents could live in frugal comfort."

With Gerard's myopic support for Howard's ways on Work Choices, in which workers were more or less forced to accept what employers would give them for their work, with a government safety-net full of gaping holes, the lower paid workers and those on working visas were going to be [were] paid peanuts. Sure, some of us are more frugal than others and in these times of global warming — about to hit the planet at full bore in 2032 — we should try to be a bit more frugal than we ever were. 

It was very socialist and Catholic of Justice Henry Bournes Higgins in the Arbitration Court, to "establish the living wage to be paid to a man, his wife and three dependent children in order to keep a family in what he termed "frugal comfort"

Sure not all codgers had three kids and a wife but on average at the time (1907) it was a pretty good guess... The idea of a "minimum wage" is not such a bad concept. Most industries can and could afford more, as often realised with indecent profits... and often choose to pay workers as little as possible. It also minimised people having to work three jobs or about 20 hours a day in order to survive...

This is why we've more or less "delegated our workforce" of many industries to China: Cheaper goods, soaring consumption, huge profits and workers paid peanuts, them barely surviving on less than minimum conditions we would not accept here... We bleed with trade deficit, but we're having a good time...

So the way Howard's Work Choices worked, unless one was crafty negotiator and of a scrooge-capitalistic juggler-nature, one would get shafted with prospect of a better life in one's tenth reincarnation as a sewer rat — or as a worker in China.

In our "capitalist" societies, about 20 per cent of workers will always need a mechanism to help them through in life. Whether it is industry or the government that provides the support is for ideologues to debate. In Howard's Work Choices, neither industry nor government were going to provide adequate support, nor relevant "frugal living". 

With global warming looming, we should all revise the beauty and necessity of "frugal living"... Of course, the richer one is, the most likely the consumption will soar and the more interesting complexity the frugality will be "adapted" to suit a rip-roaring lifestyle... 

At least, Justice Henry Bournes Higgins did not decide to "establish the living wage to be paid to a man, his wife and their six dependent children" — as families were most likely to have at the time...