This is one of those rare occasions when I hope John Howard is right about industrial relations policy: In a speech to a Perth business audience yesterday, the Prime Minister said “the choice is a very stark one”. “If we are defeated at the end of the year, if the Labor Party wins, then the [...]
The Howard Government’s union-busting ABCC released a report (pdf) today claiming that smashing unions is good for the economy. Needless to say, The Australian ran hard with the story, giving it the front page, an opinion piece (“analysis”), and the editorial. The report was prepared by Econtech, a firm that is heavily invested in the [...]
You’ll remember that around the time WorkChoices was introduced, the Prime Minister refused to say that nobody would be worse off. He tried to argue that this was because it is unwise to make general guarantees of that sort, but his opponents said it was because he knew workers would suffer under the new laws. [...]
In yet another admission that WorkChoices is a failed policy, the head of the OEA, Peter McIlwain, has been demoteed. His organisation is being renamed the Workplace Authority, and its new director is Barbara Bennett. As Mark Bahnisch points out, this is part of a spin exercise. This is how the Minister explained the new [...]
You might have seen this Government advertisement (pdf) in the newspaper, or in some of the commentary since. I most recently saw it mentioned as the hook for a David Peetz column in The Courier-Mail. He points out the hypocrisy involved in encouraging small business to consider collective bargaining in order to “to be on [...]
John Robertson is under fire for making the perfectly reasonable promise that the union movement would keep campaigning in workers’ interests even if Kevin Rudd wins the election. Dean Mighell was expelled from the ALP for using ETU members’ venacular when discussing the (legal) bargaining tactics he has used to win higher than expected pay [...]
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