One of the aims of governments introducing far-reaching change is obvious: to see new laws bedded down and survive long enough to gain widespread acceptance. Progressive governments, especially, hope for the public's approval because they realise that, from a progressive and democratic point of view, extensive support is the only game in town.
Governments attempting regressive change, on the other hand, quite often need only rely on seeking the approval of the loudest and most powerful. Even if this method should fail at the ballot box, it might achieve the bulk of its purpose if a new government, claiming to be progressive, acquiesces by leaving most of the unjust legislation in place.
The frustrating and worrying aspect of the industrial relations discourse in 2007 was how appallingly narrow it was. For the most part, discussion centred on AWAs, erosion of penalty rates, and the Coalition's removal of the no-disadvantage test.
These were important (and repugnant) aspects of WorkChoices, but they were not its driving force. The philosophical mainstay of the Coalition's attack was its comprehensive undermining of union collective action.
WorkChoices made Australia the world's only western democracy where employers faced a fine if they made agreements that allowed union officials into a work site. Similar provisions, such as union training, were to be prohibited content; in Howard's Australia, employees or unionists could be fined for even asking for such a provision.
These and innumerable, similar aspects of WorkChoices constitute the proper context from which an assessment should be made of any legislation claiming to repeal or ameliorate the Howard Government's IR laws.
As the name suggests, the new Government's Transition to Forward with Fairness Act, which commenced on 28 March, is a stop-gap framework designed to address some immediate problems about replacing AWAs with Individual Transitional Employment Agreements, reinstituting a no-disadvantage test, and covering outworkers with relevant awards. It would be unreasonable to expect a transitional act to contain all the sorts of measures citizens would want to see in a thorough overhaul of the Howard legislation.
Having said this, it is disappointing that some other changes were not made in the interim. It is difficult to see, for example, what delay or other problem would have been caused by abolishing the prohibited content section of the Act.
But more broadly there are some worrying signs that the Labor Government will interpret — or has already interpreted — the 2005-07 grass-roots campaign against WorkChoices, involving unions, churches, and community groups, in the most conservative light possible. The Rudd Government could even be described as bordering on indifferent towards the groundswell opposition to the Howard legislation.
One major voice of opposition outside the unions was the Catholic Church. Drawing on Catholic social teaching, church organisations were able to point to numerous ways in which the legislation offended Catholic social justice principles. To the extent that WorkChoices shifted bargaining power further to employers, prevented or thwarted workers' collective action, or removed the authority of the independent Commission, it was clear that Catholic social teaching was violated.
The specific means by which these affronts were achieved are too numerous to list here. It is perhaps more fruitful to focus on a fundamental objection to the way political debate has been conducted in the past two decades, especially but not exclusively pertaining to industrial relations. It is what might be termed the 'we-can't-go-back' argument, which is not an argument at all, but an assertion.
The so-called 'modernisation' agenda is a necessary fig leaf to cover what would otherwise be plain to see: changes that rely on facile jingoes such as 'moving forward' (with or without fairness), and where their intrinsic merit is not explained, are, prima facie, shifts of power to the already powerful.
Catholic social thought defies this fashion — not only in a straightforward sense of upholding specific principles such as the primacy of labour over capital, or that unions, far from being 'third parties' in the employment relationship, are the legitimate representatives of workers, but in a fundamental and general sense insofar as Catholic social thought is grounded in a rich tradition that does not blow with the latest wind.
It is noteworthy that, shortly before last year's election, the late Quadrant editor P. P. McGuiness — God rest his soul — was reduced to claiming that the only problem with Catholic social thought was that it was 'out of date'. He did not even bother to explain why what many Catholics regard as universal principles were now to be regarded as obsolete.
The current wind is still in a decidedly neoliberal direction, and in the public debate accompanying the next parliamentary bill on IR, proponents of Catholic social thought will have to remain vigilant about universal truths that need to be enunciated, explained, and defended.
LINK:
Fall in union membership blamed on WorkChoices (ABC)
Tim Battin is senior lecturer in politics at the University of New England, and is author of Choice for Whom?, a critique of the Howard IR legislation from the viewpoint of Catholic social thought.