Fair Work Australia: a fair deal?

Eight days after Kevin Rudd appeared at the Press Club and gave Australians an idea of future directions in the ALP's policy on industrial relations, Julia Gillard has begun to flesh out the policy, has started to paint the picture, to show us the landscape of IR under Labor.

Last night on The 7.30 Report, Julia broke the news about Fair Work Australia. Fair Work Australia will take over from four agencies/institutions involved in setting the industrial law parameters that govern the working lives of a significant number of Australians: the Fair Pay Commission, the Office of the Employment Advocate and the Office of Workplace Services and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC).

Rudd and Gillard say that the AIRC has served Australia for more than 100 years but it is a 20th-century institution that is too remote from the needs of modern Australian workplaces.

Miss Eagle suggests that making a disconnect between the old AIRC and establishing a whole new edifice might not be the best idea.

Miss Eagle has no longing for the old "industrial relations club" to be re-established. This was a long-standing boys club which did not keep pace with a changing economy. The club was a cosy one for construction and the tradeable goods sector (manufacturing) but it had no - and Miss Eagle means N.O. - understanding of the service sector which has been a burgeoning part of the economy over the last two decades.

In fact, some union and business leaders and Commissioners gave the impression that they knew all about the tourism and hospitality industry because they drank alcohol, ate at restaurants, and slept in hotel beds.

Another factor contributing to the lack of knowledge of the economics of the service sector has been that it tends to be dominated by women and young people. So we are talking about an entrenched form of discrimination. Women and young people were less likely to agitate and strike to improve their conditions so they were ignored. Some unions were happy to take their union dues but union attentions remained with the non-service sectors of the economy.

So, if there could be a more universal understanding of the sub-economies of this nation, it would be an improvement.

After that little vent, back to why a disconnect with the AIRC might not be the best idea.

Business is said to be angry about the prospect of a Fair Work Australia. One of the saddest things and one of the greatest hindrances to the well-being of this nation is the lack of consensus (as once there was) on major issues confronting Australia. The AIRC has delivered a great service to this nation since the earliest days of Federation.

While John Howard has gutted the AIRC, he did not abolish it.....at least not yet.

So if the ALP goes to the trouble of establishing Fair Work Australia, does this mean that it will be dead easy for a change of government to blow it out of the water?

Why not an AIRC for the sake of continuity and the possibility of some form of call to consensus?

Another thing that is not clear about Fair Work Australia is whether it will have a research function as the Fair Pay Commission does. Miss Eagle believes that this should be a function. If it is not be a function of this new one stop shop and shopfront, why not?

Miss Eagle likes the idea of the shopfront inspectorate function if it carries out its duties effectively and diligently. This will be a further challenge to union recruitment. In fact, it will be a challenge to those states which refuse to hand over their industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth.

Look to Queensland. Peter Beattie has said that Queensland will not hand over its powers which would result in the abolition of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission. Beattie would not be game - Bill Ludwig and the AWU will see to that. The AWU would be the biggest loser if Queensland handed over its industrial powers. The AWU would be gutted.

Outside the south-east corner of Queensland, the AWU has coverage, under Queensland's industrial laws, across a range of industries which in other states are the province of other unions. Transfer of powers to the Commonwealth would see coverage in regional Queensland go to these unions. This would mean for instance the Shop Assistants Union would then cover all of Queensland. Award coverage in retailing is the largest union coverage in the AWU. A transfer of powers would see this coverage lost along with a massive slice of the AWU's income.

So, will the Beattie government be prepared to establish a shopfront role for its industrial inspectorate to compete?

Miss Eagle will be watching.....

Labor turmoil: a case of needed change and a defence of the past and its people

Now its on again, turmoil and all, as the so-called Dream Team of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard challenges Kim Beazley, the current Leader, for leadership of the ALP prior to a 2007 Federal election.

Miss Eagle wonders about the over-statement of the Rudd-Gillard, Right-Left partnership as a Dream Team. However, Miss Eagle recalls that, after years of corrupt National Party government in Queensland, a major factor undergirding the successful ALP campaign which resulted in the election of Wayne Goss as Premier of Queensland 17 years ago to this very day on 2 December, 1989, was the partnership of right and left with the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and the Australian Metal Workers Union (AMWU).

This partnership shocked people - not least those within the ALP - and spelled the beginning of the end for Peter Beattie in his role as State Secretary of the Queensland ALP and meant some wilderness years for Beattie on his way to the Queensland Parliament, years on the backbench because of his rivalry with Goss, and now his success story as Queensland Premier. On this pragmatic tide, Wayne Swan - currently, Kim Beazley's Shadow Treasurer - became Qld State Secretary of the ALP. This was another rung on the Qld ALP's ladder of success. Without this right-left pragmatism, it is unlikely that Goss would have got to government and, almost certainly, not with the landslide success delivered to him in 1989.

This is something that Big Bill Ludwig, AWU heavyweight and powerbroker-kingpin in Queensland, should remember. Bill should remember in calling his factional Federal MPs to heel that he was unable to successfully call time in 1991 when Keating defeated Bob Hawke. Ludwig stuck doggedly to Hawke when the time for change had clearly come. Bill and his son, Senator Joe Ludwig, ought to remember this. Ludwig Senior and his AWU shearer mates in western Queensland stuck doggedly to Old Guard Labor tickets when Peter Beattie was reforming the ALP in Queensland in the early '80s and issuing reform tickets. Bill's mentality has not altered. Dogged loyalty can be an admirable thing but not to include yourself as a force of change and progress is not.

Bill, let the hounds off the leash in Queensland so that they can make their own decisions.

You would serve the nation well in doing this.

Women can have balls

In the long, long ago when Miss Eagle was a union official at the Australian Workers Union (AWU) in North Queensland where she was one of only two female AWU officials in the whole of Australia - and, at one stage, the only one - I used to tell my boss (who was great, by the way) that, while the blokes in the AWU all had penises, I was the only one with balls. Working at the coal face of the working-class patriarchy, I had to have balls. How else could I have survived?

It seems that, as she writes about Julia Gillard, Kaz Cooke has come to a similar conclusion. Women - while being penis-less - can have balls. Whatever the blokes and Bill Ludwig thinks - Julia is leadership material. And she is acting like it. This week it was Australian Story. Of course the blokes of the ALP right (girls are not leadership material in the faction either) are not going to sit idly by and see the leadership of the ALP go to someone on the left - irrespective of gender. So Bill had to get nasty and personal - which he can do rather well. The master of the comb-over had a go at Julia about her hair. Well, what else could be expected? I have only known Bill to support one woman in her career and that had overtones.

Interesting this week was Bill Shorten's deft handling of Bill Ludwig's boots and all attitude to a single site agreement with Qantas moving some of its maintenance to Brisbane. Shorten managed to praise Ludwig, hose him down publicly, and shift criticism to Qantas in a short space of time. Is this why they refer to Bill Shorten as a future leader?