It is clear who will be the first to fall over the edge. The young and the unskilled. I thought the comments on apprentaships a little naive. High rates of pay stopping employers taking them on.Give it a rest.No matter what twist Govt. supporters attempt to put on the IR changes nothing will alter the fact that it is about making people work harder and longer for less. It is about increasing profits at the expense of wages. It has been acknowledged that it is about removing fairness from the system. The changes will not improve productivity. Mr Howard knows his constituents and he serves them well, the big end of town.The working people and thier Unions survived and outlasted Kennett and Court and it will be the same with the Wee Man.

I shudder to think what will happen as under the current laws companies are trying to shift workers to AWA's and pay them less as evidenced by the court case that has just been completed (http://smh.com.au/news/banking/judge-blocks-bank-pay-cuts/2005/09/26/1127586791009.html) to quote from this article "(Justice) Merkel described the bank's individual and "unregulated contracts of employment" as an industrial regulation avoidance scheme which "possesses an ingenuity that is reminiscent of the tax avoidance schemes of the 1970s"."

Enjoyable reading for those on low rates of pay..........

"relatively high-level apprenticeship wage " yes peanuts instead of dirt. I wonder if any of the people pushing these so called reforms has family members that work in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs?

Paul Gollan would like us to believe that all employers are benevolent and are going to ensure that AWAs will be fair for each employee. Ask the workers at Aldi supermarkets how much say they have had in negotiating a workplace agreement that suit their individual circumstances - it just didn't happen. They can be called to work at any time they might be needed, too bad if your childcare provisions don't match company needs.

He would have us believe that the planned IR changes will result in increased productivity. They may, and probably will, increase profitability, but productivity is a different matter entirely. All that will happen is that workers will lose their penalty rates for working outside what normal people consider to be normal working hours, they are unlikely to produce "more" in a given time period just because it happens to suit their bosses.

He would have us believe that the proposed IR law changes will result in higher levels of employment. Again, there is no strict correlation between profitability and a willingness to employ more people. It is far more likely that with the abolition of such things as penalty rates the same number of workers will be required to work longer hours. This is not a productivity increase - productivity means using fewer workers, working harder, to produce more widgets in a given hour.

Unless we can move away from this ideologically driven view of what the workplace should be like, we cannot begin to make sense of what can be done to end the under-employment and unemployment that is increasing the number of marginalised people in our community.

Trying to understand things from a purely economic point of view leaves out so much of what makes a nation operate. Then again, if you don't have to count those who have given up trying to get into the workforce then you can claim (!?!) to have reduced unemployment - or is that just typical government spin?

Excellent post jimoctec. The IR changes will allow companies to pay their employees less. What they do with the resultant excess money is the key issue. Increased employment? That is an enormous leap of faith. If you own a business and come across a windfall of money, do you employ more people to soak that up? No. Decisions to hire or fire are mostly influenced by the demand of your product and your capacity to serve that demand. I agree with others before me in that the savings will transfer directly into profits, as with other cost cutting exercises. Far from reducing unemployment, the AFPC will only serve to increase employees’ subsidy of employers’ wealth.

Mr Gollan says that "Business has argued that the relatively high-level apprenticeship wage used in state awards is a disincentive for employers." This is an attributed comment from "business" and I would be interested in knowing the source.

In a time of low unemployment, the laws of supply and demand suggest the opposite - that falling apprenticeship wages would exacerbate the skills shortage as young adults abandoned the system. According to a June 2005 DEST survey, the greatest problem for apprentices completing their studies was low wages (http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/A496076E-DA01-44D9-A168-264FB98DCF20/5948/RevisedDSIReportSynopsisjune8.pdf page 14)

When business complains about the high cost of an input, it implies that they are assured of it's supply. If business is serious about addressing the skills shortage, they wouldn't be complaining about apprenticeship wages, and I don't believe that they are. Checkout this 2005 ACCI report: http://www.tcci.com.au/content/EET%20Policy/Apprenticeship%20Survey%20Attachment.pdf.

Finally, allow me to review the words "relatively-high wages". I suggest these words are correct if comparing Australian wages with wages in developing nations. Certainly, an apprentice wage of $242 per week cannot be considered high by any domestic standard.

Mr Gollan critiques the AIRC for putting "ambit claims by vested interests" ahead of "economic and labour market fundamentals. Given that business and government are vested interests, surely it is not the AIRC but the author who is deserving of this insulting remark.