Robodebt: the Week that Was.

Sometimes the do-gooder/bleeding heart image can be an asset.

Surprising? Not really. It’s been one of Labor’s traditional selling points: voters perceive Labor as “caring” about fairness.

Using his mum as example, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has gone to great lengths to highlight that.

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There is a historical reason for that perception. Although the term “welfare state” is no longer fashionable, the Australian Labor Party was key in its adoption here, and its governments established its general institutions, including public health (under Medicare). They also created the main welfare payments. The age pension, for example, dates to 1908, during the Fisher Government; the unemployment benefits (currently called JobSeeker) was product of the Chifley Government in 1945. More recently, in 2013, it was under the Gillard Government that the National Disability Insurance Scheme was created.

So, unsurprisingly the Albanese Government launched the Robodebt Royal Commission last year.

Nothing New Under the Sun (Updated).

 

 
Maybe things are different elsewhere, but in Australia you can hardly read the news or watch TV news reports without hearing about how hard it is for local businesses to recruit staff. And you hear those tales of woe whether unemployment is high or low, in good or in bad times.

After a while, if one pays attention, one realises that kind of story seems to follow a template or a script.

IR Omnibus Bill goes to the Senate.

Unless something unexpected happens, the IR Omnibus Bill should be discussed in the Senate this week. This is the official ACTU ad explaining why the Bill should be stopped. 

There are good reasons to expect the bill will not be passed, at least in its current form (see here) and, indeed, the crossbench has already proposed a number of amendments to the bill.

This optimism, however, must be qualified. Amendments are a double-edged sword: parliamentarians frequently trade their vote for some concession for their constituencies -- so-called "horse trading". That way they get the bill passed, while pretending that they did their best to defeat it (only succeeding in improving it).

Ideally, therefore, the bill should be defeated outright. Readers can also send the senators an email. 

Unions in Australia: Reality and Fiction.

 
After some fifty years of relentless “neoliberal” onslaught, unions still make a difference for Australian workers.

You don’t need to take my word for that. According to the latest ABS release on trade union membership, “median weekly earnings for employees who were trade union members in their main job were $1,450 per week”: $350 (or 32%) more than their non-union counterparts.

With only one exception (salespeople), that holds for staff ranging from managerial and white collar down to blue collar workers. Indeed, for community and personal service workers the difference is a whopping 60%.

Industrial Relations Surprises?

 

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To be honest, I can’t say I’m surprised to find now that all the talk about all of us being in this together – which we heard repeated as a mantra during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis – was just bullshit, but that doesn’t mean much. As a feeling, it speaks well of those uttering those words honestly. As a statement of fact, it was hopelessly naive for me to believe Morrison.

So, I was kind of expecting something like this.

You see, scepticism about Scott Morrison’s good faith doesn’t show that one is particularly farsighted: anyone with a moderately functional brain and a minimum of memory could see the truth behind his act.

What does me some credit is that I wasn’t impressed either by all the comparisons between the Prices and Income Accord of Bob Hawke (starting in 1983) and Christian Porter’s roundtables including bosses and their representatives and the union movement. On this I have to say Michele O’Neil and Sally McManus, by far the best union leaders in decades, were sadly wrong (as is wrong Jim Stanford)

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Sold at the time as political wisdom, the Labor’s Accord – inspired by liberal/leftish ideas – was ultimately damaging to the union movement and to workers. If back then that medicine was poisonous, is there any reason to believe it would now be benign?

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These last two weeks Porter, federal Minister for Industrial Relations and Attorney General, announced a raft of measures agreed behind the union representative’s backs to further impoverish workers, under the pretext of reducing unemployment.

And, in the same spirit of honesty, this is where I have to confess I was surprised: the variety of measures included in the COALition’s Industrial Relations Omnibus Bill.

Without further ado:

So much for consensus: Morrison government's industrial relations bill is a business wish list

Jim Stanford, University of Sydney

Port Botany: Point and Counterpoint.

 
The Point.

Peter van Duyn – formerly General Manager Container Terminals, Patrick Corporation (1989-2000) and currently maritime logistics expert, Centre for Supply Chain and Logistics at Deakin University – purports to explain what the dispute between the Maritime Union of Australia and Patrick Terminals is all about.

That is an admirable purpose, to be sure. And one can wholeheartedly agree with him that cool heads are required.

Unfortunately, having spent 20 years as a boss at Patrick – including the dramatic year 1998 he evidently remembers well – Van Duyn seems only able of seeing the world through boss’ eyes.

In his latest piece for The Conversation Australia, Van Duyn starts by claiming that the union “initially asked for a 6% annual pay increase”. Readers will surely feel that sounds exorbitant, yes? I myself would. Australia is going through a recession, after all. 

MUA Press Release on Port Botany.

In view of the hysterical misinformation Scott Morrison and Christian Porter have been peddling so as to justify their siding with management and against workers in the dispute between the Maritime Union of Australia and Patricks Terminals, I think I can do no better than to present the other side in this story:

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Workers’ Mail: Climate Change, COVID-19 and Wage Theft.

“As we reconstruct our economy after the pandemic we have an opportunity to build a stronger, fairer economic framework that includes a credible and coherent plan on climate change and energy. In rebuilding our economy from the COVID crisis it is critical that job creation efforts also reduce emissions and keep Australians safe from the devastating impacts of bushfires and climate change.” - Michele O'Neil, President, Australian Council of Trade Unions

The ACTU, as part of the Australian Climate Roundtable, has issued the statement “Far-Reaching Climate Change Risks to Australia Must be Reduced and Managed”, among other things, calling the Morrison Government to adopt a net-zero emissions target for 2050.

Comrades O'Neil and McManus, keep up the good work!

The Week that Was.

The talk of the week was the Economic and Fiscal Update delivered jointly last Thursday by federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and federal Minister for Finances Mathias Cormann.

The main figures? Here goes, courtesy of The New Daily:

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And this:

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Know Your Cleaners.

Once upon a time I kept close contact with commercial cleaning firms’ staff. If you are an office worker in Australia -- whether in the public or private sector -- and you often burn the midnight oil, you might have seen those cleaners. They come after 5:00-6:00 pm, Monday to Friday, once most of your co-workers have left.

After all that time, of course, my memory may need an urgent update. To give you an idea: the union covering cleaners at the time was the LHMU (Liquour, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers’ Union).

With that in mind, the piece by Associate Professor Shelley Marshall (Director of the RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre,  RMIT University) for The Conversation matches well what I remember, although Marshall doesn’t go into the endless -- and ultimately justified -- complains by building administrators, with the consequent endless harassment of cleaners by their foremen.

What really doesn’t fit at all is the opening picture in Marshall’s article. The one below seems much closer to my recollection of how such cleaners look like (which could be an important point, I would have thought):

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Compare to the picture below:

You better hope your work cleaner is one of the few who has time to do a thorough job

Shutterstock

Shelley Marshall, RMIT University

On Today’s BLM Sydney March (Updated).

Whoever sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother.

Last night the NSW Supreme Court banned the Sydney-wide march “Stop All Black Deaths in Custody: Rally and Vigil for George Floyd and David Dungay”, scheduled for today (1500 AEST, Town Hall). The courts’ decision upheld concerns from both state and federal CMOs, Kerry Chant and Brendan Murphy respectively, and political authorities over COVID-19 transmission.

Short & Simple: JobKeeper Wage Subsidy.

The JobKeeper Wage Subsidy scheme PM Scott Morrison announced a few weeks ago has generated many comments, some positive, some less enthusiastic.

The article below, from The Conversation, offers a first evaluation. It raises many interesting questions, but it is not exhaustive.

JobKeeper payment: how will it work, who will miss out and how to get it?

@shotsoflouis/Upplash, CC BY-NC

Rebecca Cassells, Curtin University and Alan Duncan, Curtin University

The A$130 billion $1,500-per-fortnight JobKeeper payment will benefit six million Australians for six months, with payments expected from May 1.

Join the Fight!

It didn’t surprise me that Scott (“Duterte Knockoff”) Morrison and his errand boy Christian Porter reintroduced the Union-Bashing Bill on behalf of the big end of town. Like I said, Morrison is waging a class war on unions and workers and he will not stop willingly.

What did surprise me was that they rammed it through the Lower House of Parliament the week following their initial failure, before parliamentary break. You have to give it to them: the bastards know what they stand for. We could learn that from them.

Breaking: Union Busting Bill … Busted!

The COALition’s ironically titled “Ensuring Integrity Bill”, more appropriately known as Union Busting Bill, did not pass in the Senate, after the COALition bulldozed it in the Lower House.

Observers and pundits, as the COALition itself, were sure that abomination would pass (to be honest, so was I). Apparently, its leading promoter, the Attorney General and federal Industrial Relations Minister, Christian Porter, had even invited the press to a conference to crow about a victory they were already savouring.

Instead, Michele O’Neil (ACTU President) and the indefatigable Sally McManus (Secretary), after intense campaigning, had the last laugh.

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Workers’ Mail: Morrison’s Kill the Unions Bill (Updated).

The working class has been reduced to this. Email from Michele O’Neil, ACTU President:

Two years ago Federal Police raided union offices in full view of the national media, who had been tipped off about the raids.

On Friday, the Federal Court ruled that the Registered Organisations Commission did not have reasonable grounds to organise the AFP raid of the AWU offices.

These raids should never have happened. The raids were not justified and were used as a political weapon against unions.

If the Ensuring Integrity Bill becomes law, the same Registered Organisations Commission who organised these discredited raids, will be given the power over a union’s very existence.

Obvious Reason Why Wages Aren't Growing.

There's an obvious reason wages aren't growing, but you won't hear it from Treasury or the Reserve Bank

The most obvious reason for wage stagnation is the decline in unionisation over the past three decades. But you won’t hear that from government economists. www.shutterstock.com

David Peetz, Griffith University
Wages growth for Australian workers is among the worst in the industrialised world. For more than a third of workers on individual contracts, wages aren’t growing at all.

This is odd, given Australia is in a “record” 28th year of economic growth with apparently low unemployment and a supposedly strong economy.

Workers' Mail: Support O-I Glass Strike.

From Sally McManus,

Last week I visited striking workers at O-I Glass. They have been on strike for nine weeks for a fair pay rise and they need your support.

All Australians need a pay rise. The Reserve Bank Governor says so, economists say so, even the government says pay rises are needed to keep the economy going. But as we know, pay rises don’t fall from trees - working people by being union, fight for them. These workers are taking up the fight against this multinational to break through for 3% - at least 3% is what the Reserve Bank says all of us need.

Global #ClimateStrike on September 20.

Email from the Nature Conservation Council:

Something groundbreaking is happening on September 20. For the first time in history, people across the world will walk out of work and school together for a global strike to demand action on the climate crisis.

Being Ripped Off?

Or reaching the “heights of unlawfulness”.

In Australia, when we are not learning of workers being ripped off by their bosses, we learn of people on social security being ripped off by Centrelink.

As a service to readers of this blog, I’ve been researching what possible actions one can take in those cases. Here is a short list of resources.

The Week That Was: Economic Parasitism.

Slavery was profitable to the slaveholder because slaves produced more for him than what he spent in their maintenance. Masters didn’t pay slaves their labour. Of what slaves produced in their labour time, a fraction went to their maintenance; the master kept the rest for himself. That much is evident, even to economists.

Things are evident, too, in the case of medieval serfs (although here I wouldn’t be surprised one had to draw a picture for economists, usually ignorant of history). During a part of their working week serfs worked the land his lord allocated to their maintenance; the rest of the week they worked the land the lord reserved for himself.

Those remarks are useful to understand contemporary Australia.