Thanks for a great article that unravelled the statistics, Chris.

According to Kenneth Davidson in The Age the latest OECD research indicates that full employment can be achieved through collective bargaining and creating an equitable society.

The dangers of creating a class of working poor is that birth rates will decline as they did in Australia in the 1930s so the spectre of an aged population looms larger. as some one who worked in an unregulated industry, IT, where long hours were demanded my personal experience was that long hours caused personal relationships to suffer and made women choose between career or children. It was impossible to find part time work and women were under the gun to get the kids to childcare and then to work on time.

We all seem to forget that the biggest losers out of workchoices will be those workers who rely on a union to wage bargain for them. Twice as many public sector workers are union members than workers in the private sector. Thus the real advantage of the government introducing workchoices is the opportunity to slash the public sector wages bill. So public servants if you want a decent standard of living you better stand up for your rights next Wednesday.

The unspoken facts that should be addressed by commentators is that we are already living well beyond our means (as indicated by the level of our private foreign debt), and we are about to be confronted by the end of the age of cheap oil. The combination of both of these factors means that the average standard of living will have to reduced substantially, something that no politician who desires to be re-elected can afford to mention. The workers in Australia who are internationally competitive will struggle to maintain their present living standard, and those that are not will see theirs decline substantially. As a guess I think the main difference over the next 20 years is that we will move from a nation of houseowners to one of renters, with the banks and insurance companies owning the houses, having been unable to sell them when people default on mortgages.

The greatest non-military threat that we face over the next few years is that of having our foreign debt called in. This could occur through no fault of our own, if, for example, the US were to default on its foreign debt. Thank heavens the Howard government has paid off our government debt, so we do not face the threat of sovereign default.

It is correct that we could choose to have an equitable economy with full employment. However the standard of living would be at subsistence level.

I agree with most of what Chris has written. Plerdsus has said exactly what most think these "benefits" are really about. That is lowering Australian wages, killing off many home grown industries and leaving us with whatever is left after the resources boom dies down. Even today I hear China is trying to buy their own access to WA minerals to avoid using BHP or Rio Tinto.

The big question is what will be left for Australians if our conditions do equate with other countries? No breaks from work, no penalties for ignoring our families, no home life at all really. Certainly no home, just short term rentals, caravans perhaps. Gypsies?

I can really only think of sport as being our biggest asset after minerals. It's about the only area we excel in as people.

What are these benefits dangled in front of Australian workers? In exchange for leave, penalty payments and the rest? If your expertise is short in supply the benefit is one thing. Money. If your expertise is plentiful the benefit is the same. Except you get less or no money depending on your competetiveness.

We're supposed to accept a decline in our standards of living. Why? Certainly those that claim to be leading our economy show no personal restraint with bonuses and salaries in the multi millions. Where is their constraint? Let the politicians show the personal restraint before they preach and try to impose it.

If those people agreed to accept the same conditions as the lowest level worker we might have a deal but then we would be talking Communisim wouldn't we? And we know that works exactly the same as our supposed "democracy" does right now. Animal Farm strikes. Some are more equal than others.

Is Beasley right? No, neither option is what we need. We need equality, fairness and a chance for all. Remember that Lucky Country? Where did it go? Tell me Johnny, where? Did it die with Bradman?

Madness comes in many forms, Paul Keating showed us that politicians can do anything with figures. 4.9% unemployment lowest in 30 years, of course if somebody is employed for an hour per week, they are not unemployed, they may not have enough to survie on, but they are not unemployed. The average weekly wage $53,000 per annum, I have met two people in my life who were on or above the average weekly wage, I'm 50.

What greedy businesses fail to realise is that by dropping the ordinary worker pay, it will save them money in the short term, however when working people don't have the money for petrol, medicines, food etc, they are unable to purchase the items the business sells, and so it begins a downward spiral into oblivion.

No problem for C.E.O.'s of large companies, just sack another thousand, and give themselves a payrise, cut services, then retire on a multi-million dollar payout. Those of us who are left behind as cannon fodder can live out our miserable lives in poverty. This is not the "fair go" Australia I grew up in, we have been almost totally absorbed by the US mantra. This used to be a proud country who delighted in being individual, Aussie, fair go for everyone, no matter what race, colour or creed, God almighty has it changed since those days.

Our national icons have either been sold or in the process of being, wages cut to satisfy greedy multi-national companies, while small business is too ignorant to realise that they are next in line for the chop, it's sad really, paridise lost, I am glad I'll be dead before the last wall in the house of cards falls, conservatism is certainly not progressive. If the employer so chooses to reward a brilliant worker, the the employer is able to pay above award, basicly the system that has just been replaced. Flexability, productivity all the other BS is simply that, how on Earth did we survive for the last 200 years without this rubbish?

Well said SHONGA.

Have you thought about what happens next? Every worker becomes an individual contractor. Get yourself an ABN and tender for the job. It's already happening.

Everyone becomes an aspirational small business owner, Howard will love it. Then the Govt has got rid of super, workers comp, payroll tax (just to piss the states off)and the pathetic minimum standards we now have.

We must vote out Howard. I realise that Beazley is the only alternative but can we accept another 3 years of executive rule.

Plerdus
- Who do you think owns the banks and insurance companies? Australian banks and insurance companies have pretty low levels of foreign ownership.
- Why would the US default on their government debt considering that the vast majority of it is denominated in USD, a currency they can print? Isn’t a USD devaluation more likely, something that would result in booming US exports?
- How can Australia’s foreign debt be called in exactly? Huge chunks of our foreign debt exist in the form of structured securities with fixed maturity dates issued by our own banks. The risk of default resides with our foreign lenders, who will get a reduced return on investment as each individual Australian borrower defaults.

Well said Steve,
But the next thing to watch out for will be when many Contractors, who are working as defacto employees, realise that there is something the Tax Office calls "Personal Services Income".

This means the ATO will treat them as employees and virtually all of their new-found Tax Deductions will cease to exist.

Dear Billie
you said:

[where long hours were demanded my personal experience was that long hours caused personal relationships to suffer and made women choose between career or children]

and for the words 'long hours' could be substituted with 'resource' such and such, and 'women' with 'society'.

Our fundamental capitalistic approach to industry is such that it will exploit and expend, then move on to the next thing or person to consume.

I realize its not a monolithic unified economic approach. There are people out there with a more tempered approach, who try to balance the gouging of both human and natural resources with the needs to have relationships and not eat yourself out of a living, but......

...there are sufficient out there who DON'T... they just see the opportunities in a Machievellian/Sartre'an manner and view all things human and natural in a utilitarian way and bow before the evil galactic war Lord named 'Shareholder Value' and his equally evil henchmen/sub gods of 'CEO BONUS'

Its nice when Bill Gates declares he will give 95% of his wealth to 'Charity'....but my Bible says "When you give, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, don't sound a trumpet before you like the hypocrites do, that they might gain the praises of men, they have their reward"

The cynical me, is kind of wondering if Bills 'Charity' is something like "Providing Computers and software to 3rd world countries" which in effect is just Microsoft marketing by proxy. I'll await news.

A doctrinal Socialism is equally bankrupt. I don't think there is any social/economic 'system' which can be codified which will solve the desire for overall welfare and that of individual freedom to achieve.

I'd prefer that we lived in both our stewardship of the planet and people in simple a "Love God first" and "Do for your neighbour as you would have them do for you" manner.

Of course we have a few Jihadists and North Korea's to 'Tame' first :) because they only want 'Their way' or the Highway.

Okay, BOAZ_David.

So if Bill Gates mentions he is giving money to charity, he's blowing a sinful trumpet? If he did not mention it, then people would condemn him for not doing so.

Besides, it's arguably better for business giants to improve image through charity than through yet another advertising campaign.

Current U.S. mininum wage = $OZ 6-43/hr
Current OZ minimum wage =$12-30/hr
Current account deficit =$500,000,000,000
An American minimum wage earner toils for 11 hours to fill the average petrol tank.
The bane of all subcontractors is getting paid on time. In my experience, 30 day accounts are a rarty as businesses regurlarly stretch payments out to 120 or 150 days or in some cases never.
It is only a matter of time before these conditions are forced on all contractors.I wonder if the banks or credit card companies will forego repayments for up to 5 months while I wait for the cheque thats in the mail. Business have a habit of using sub contractors as banks as they pay no interest on what they owe subcontractors.

There should be a code of conduct for both the employer and the employee.Unfair dismissal was a disincentive to employ people and it had to go.We need to exclude our parisitical legal system from all manner relationships in our lives since they just play one side off against the other to maximise their own bottom line.Our present legal system is destroying our social and economic fabric.

AWA's are really unnecessary for ordinary workers and they do give the employer the edge.Just make it easier to fire unsatisfactory workers including pollies and public servants.

The push is on to lower wages since we cannot compete with Asia's boundless cheap labour.Our balance of payments deficit is accelerating and we will eventually become insolvent as a nation because we virtually have no manufacturing,our existing industries in mineral and energy resources are being acquired by Multi-nationals and the share market thrives on the sweat of the poor.If people cannot afford to buy basic commodities that they produce,then we have poverty traps from which they cannot escape.

There is no choice,we either reduce wages to that of third world countries with all the crime and social problems of an uneducated population,or we slow down the rate at which we are removing tarrifsand even select certain industries to protect like Europe does.We seem to be the only nation on this planet that protects none of it's industries.Where is the level playing field?

There is no doubt that many workers in this country need to smarten up their act but we should use less stick and more carrot. Your wealth is in your people and if you treat them like curs,in a law of the jungle environment we will have both a devalued population and economy.

The Coalition is rapidly losing support but the alternatives are absymal.It is time for a new political force not aligned to union cronyism or multi-national power and greed.There still is a strong ethic in Australia for "The fair go" for all and John Howard had better take heed.Woe is us,the electorate.

Shonga said that the average annual income is $53000 but he knows very few people who earn over that. perhaps that's because the Australian Tax Office says the mean adult income is $26,000. The average is calculated by totalling all income then dividing by the number of incomes totalled. The mean is calculated by ranking all incomes from highest to lowest then finding the person in the middle and determining their income.

Plersis: why do you assume that if we have an equitable society with a social safety net that all Australians will live at subsistence level? Kenneth Davidson said that the latest OECD study had shown that collective bargaining and providing retraining assistance to the unemployed worked successfully in Austria, Denmark, Netherlands and Ireland. In fact talking of Ireland that was set up in 1923 as a peasants republic and as a result there was fearful poverty, I can remember seeing ragged skinny people scouring rubbish bins in Dublin in July 1976, prior to Thatcher there were no homeless in London. As a result of government tax breaks for IT, Ireland now exports IT software and software developers to the world.

BOAZ_David : So what’s the IR legislation got to do with hours worked? IMHO workers who don’t conform to employer expectations are penalised and I like the scandanavian attitude of building a civil society. Opponents point to the high tax regimes in Scandanavia, but newsflash, when you add in the additional private health insurance and superannuation payments middle-high income Australians contribute the Swedes pay less for more aged pension and health care. Scandanavians they are concerned about using only what they need and not squandering resources. Australian 16 [old] square homes are considered wasteful by Danes.

Howard is now fighting to free up the working conditions of independent contractors so they can claim tax exemptions for costs incurred in earning their income. This will effect 600,000 to 1,9 million workers who range from IT consultants, owner drivers for Tooheys, building industry subcontractors to airline hostesses for Virgin and Jetstar. Now the advantages of being an independent contractor are that you have more tax deductions, you pay your tax 18 months after its earned, however you have to submit BAS statements and make provision for that tax bill.
Being an independent contractor when you are a high income earner is excellent as you can use the money before paying your tax.
However if you are earning about $30,000, want to buy a car, a flat, have a life then you are really going to struggle to pay your income tax. I suspect that the tax office declares many airline hostesses bankrupt when they fail to meet their tax obligations and they, poor girls, feel that their failure is totally their own fault for poor budgetting skills.

And I repeat that Australia doesn't need to compete with India and China and if we attempt to, we will lose. Have you read the latest management bumpf that says that the globalisation of labour effectively means that labour is an unlimited resource. Applying this to a bit of demand and supply analysis means that the costs of labour can be driven down. I think there are many reasons to restrict migration of guest workers into Australia, some reasons being

1. concern over qualifications of guest workers
2. ability to guest workers to communicate with existing workforce
3. ability of employers to avoid training up Australians for the job, remember that TXU, the new owners of Victoria's electricity grid, has trained 3 apprentices in the same time frame that Country West, NSW electricity grid west of dividing range, has had 800 apprentices

If you don't train Australians to do the job, and you aren't going to let them sit on the dole, what do you expect them to do?

Billie “According to Kenneth Davidson in The Age the latest OECD research indicates that full employment can be achieved through collective bargaining and creating an equitable society.”

That theory has been tried and failed. Keatings “recession we had to have” being a classic example and the loss of competitiveness in the UK throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when collective bargaining and “social engineering in pursuit of the nebulous and intangible” was all the rage. Although it is typical of the Age to fill their pretentious pages with such pontificating twaddle.

As for what Beazley thinks – does it matter? Beazley has been out of government and out of touch for more than a decade. He has “buckleys” chance of leading the labor party anywhere except further into the political wilderness and possibly (/hopefully) the abyss.

As for AWA’s, I recently negotiated an individual workplace agreement, much as I have done for the past 20 years. Why get trapped by being dragged down to the level of mediocrity in a union deal when you can do a lot better by being measured for your own merit? Merit of course is that distilled element of the individual which seems one of the first things to be burnt off by collectivisation, including collective bargaining and other like rubbish.

So Chris Monnox, when you have evolved through adolescence, come to terms with girls and puberty, you will likely, have also metamorphosed from a socialist to a conservative.
It has been often observed, not a socialist by 20, you have not developed a heart but not a conservative by 25, you have not developed an intellect.

Billie, we certainly need guest workers. Working in Australia is
basically optional for Australians. There are jobs (like in meatworks)
which more and more Aussies simply don't want to bother with.
These are key export industries, they need labour, from one place
or another.

The problem is not guest workers. Its that Aussies have it so good,
that they can ignore many jobs, if they don't feel like doing them.

Yabby, perhaps those companies and their jobs (meatworkers etc) have for too long been able to pick and choose, and to some extent exploit us aussie workers. Mainly because of previous higher unemployment and the lack of other industry opportunities.

Maybe they ought to be encouraged to improve their working conditions and wages, with employee incentives and benefits, instead of taking the easier and cheaper option of 'guest workers'.

The tide has turned and they're reaping what they've always sewn!

Socrates, conditions and pay are already pretty good. The real problem is that many Aussies won't work if the job is not where
they happen to live. They won't move to where the work is.
Alot of meatworks are in regional areas, not in Sydney or
Melbourne.

The other thing is, to work in the meat industry, you actually
have to get out of bed, go to work, and do a real days work all
day. You can't have drugs in your system either, (dangers with
knives etc) Many of the young ones would rather have a cushy
job or play video games. They think that a job in a meatworks
is below them.

In West Australia, where there is a real shortage of labour
due to the mining boom, foreign workers are the only option
that is available. Trucking sheep across Australia to
slaughter them, is not a viable option. If Aussies don't
want the work, so bring in foreign guest workers!

Col Rouge glad that you are a key worker who has been able to negotiate better employment conditions. I found that I was powerless in AWA negotiations and so did some infant welfare centre nurses who were denied a pay rise because a local councillor could and did to prove he could stop their pay rise. I was shocked to discover that the only complete copy of the AWA was held by the employer – I had signed an abbreviated AWA – all very legal.

Can you imagine a state government wanting to negotiate individual contracts with 100,000 teachers, I think not. The workplace reforms of the 1980s reduced the number of awards covering each workplace because no employer wants to negotiate more than 20 contracts. Effectively AWAs will be written so all employees are on the same conditions but its illegal to talk about payrates or have a union involved.

Yabby I can remember in 1978 the western Australian meat workers conditions being eroded and workers being laid off because of live sheep exports. Today the abattoir operators live in Melbourne and contract to run the Derby, Wyndham and Alice Springs abattoirs during the dry season. Where do the slaughtermen live, not Broome, Derby or Wyndham. What do slaughtermen do during the wet season, not collect the dole in northern Australia, nor work for tourist operations.

Northern Australia has a great shortage of skilled workers for seasonal industries because there is no income support for these workers in the off season. Solutions could include training locals for these skilled jobs, providing government support during the wet season, government subsidised airfares to the worksites. Shipping in guest workers is the cheapest solution but does nothing to improve the social fabric of northern Australian communities or build a permanent population adjacent to East Timor

Billie, I was not even thinking of Northern Australia or what
happened 30 years ago. Today most NW cattle are shipped to
Indonesia as the most viable option. If its a win-win situation,
so be it.

West Australia is a huge place, a third of Aus. It also generates
by far the most exports, to pay ES bills. Yet we do it with
10% of the population. The crisis in the meat industry has
been in the SW. Export contracts to Japan were being lost,
due to lack of labour. The work is not seasonal, its all year.

Locals are offered training, but you can't put them in chains
and drag them to work. In reality, anyone in WA who is employable
and wants employment, is employed, the State is booming overall.

One of the works involved is a grower owned Coop, not some Sydney
or Melbourne based operator. Trucking a million sheep east is
not the solution either.

In this sort of situation, where Aussies don't want the jobs,
exports are being lost, contract workers from overseas make
perfect sense. They make as much in a month as they would earn
in a year at home. We get the export $ and the job done. Its
a win-win all round. I have yet to see a good reason why it
should not happen. You or Socrates haven't named any yet

I'm afraid its not as simple as saying AWA's are either good or bad Chris, although Kim Beazley has certainly drawn a line in the sand by promising to abolish them.

The likely fact of the matter is that certain workers are well suited to AWA's and others not so well suited.

For example, why do you think professional sports people are engaged on individual contracts and not collective agreements?

The answer is that the greater the talent the greater the pay packet.

Industry is similar. Individuals who strive and are more productive are likely to be rewarded for that productivity with an AWA.

Of course, there are certain other types of workers, who only do just enough not to earn the ire of their supervisors. They always use their allotted sickies and they are generally the last to arrive and the first to leave. They are more than happy to hide inside the protection of collective agreements and reap the bonuses that others earn on their behalf.

I expect that there were plenty of these guys out there today with their comrade unionists protesting against Work Choices. Who can blame them?

Rejecting Work Choices will benefit them. But it definitely won't benefit the business they work for, or the consumer, who will ultimately pay an inflated price for their product, due to the inflated labour production cost.

Nope, definitely not good economic management Chris.

Yabby, like you I am concerned about vast numbers of Australians being disengaged from the society in which they live, I don’t think that having large numbers of people rotting on the dole is a good thing. Today each Australian is responsible for their own training, they make their decisions based on their perceptions of future employment opportunities and knowledge of past experiences.

How long does it take to retrain for a new career – at least 4 years if you have to go back to high school then undertake a 3 year course, then perhaps you have to get another years experience before you have final accreditation and perhaps you have to move to get the training and wait for a place to become available. So some one has to be pretty keen to undertake retraining and confident that they will get an opportunity to practice and in these days of paying for tuition you want to be sure that the additional income offsets the costs of retraining.

It may take 3 years to become a qualified slaughterman, how long has WA had its shortage of slaughtermen? How mobile is the workforce? Remember that Australia’s average age is 34. Why would a 50 year old, who owns house, kids finishing high school, has friends in the local community move for work? Can 50 year olds still work on a production line or do they suffer muscular and skeletal injuries from their middle aged bodies?

This is all about timing. Over what time frame do businesses look to make a profit? Actually large Australian corporations only look 12 months out.

Fyrdman your ability to negotiate for extraordinary wages depends on how effectively you can differentiate yourself from the other suppliers, not how efficient you are.
Isn’t it obscene that we pay sportsmen so much as well as pay their tuition at AIS?
If ANZ were serious about efficiency they could have dispensed with their arrangements with card services and got the job done far cheaper and more effectively using the same technology as Medicare.

Billie, I have negotiated my terms and conditions since the mid 1970’s by resigning when I found them unsatisfactory and deciding whether to accept what was offered to keep me and all that without having a union involved.

I recall a lot of the problems with slaughter houses was due to intense and unreasonable union demands for non-sustainable conditions.

As for suggesting there is a shortage of skilled labour, well that means that finding alternative jobs is comparatively easier and certainly a hell of a lot easier than when we had 12% unemployment under labor.

Now “Today each Australian is responsible for their own training, they make their decisions based on their perceptions of future employment opportunities and knowledge of past experiences.”

Darn it, I have always considered myself responsible for my own training, decisions based on future employment opportunities and knowledge of the past.

I am absolutely certain such significant research and choices are too important to be left in the hand of any government and never, ever in the hands of unelected union officials (maybe that explains how I got to become, to use your words, a “key worker who has been able to negotiate better employment conditions.”)

Either way, what Beazley and the author of the article think is going to make no difference, unions are a spent force in this age of change, the power elites of the union movement know they are gasping their past breaths, hence the desparate attempts at TV advertising and fraudulent hardship claims.
Beazley is not making speeches, he is merely mouthing the death rattle of the passing era of labour union influence.

Col you are very fortunate to be such a key player that you can negotiate your own contracts. How do you know you are fairly paid? Before I sign a contract I check what people who are doing similar work are earning and that includes checking that I am getting better than award pay and conditions.

Your lack of concern over training indicates that you possibly have limited formal qualifications. Hmmm, there aren't very many industries that will take on unqualified and inexperienced people these days. Only sales really.
So how do people get the information they need to select a career to train for?
How do we train people for future industries?
Or do we just hire in skilled people from overseas so Australians become the poor white trash of Asia.

Billie, the problem is that the WA economy is quite different from
that in the East, but we are sucked up in general policy. People
like Beasley, simply don't understand that, even the present Govt
has problems there.

I know of three regional meatworks, which all train their staff.
They just need people who are willing to work, turn up every day,
and who aren't on drugs. Thats a far bigger problem then it seems.
Ice seems to be taking over from speed with alot of the young and
as its far more addictive, its virtually impossible to employ
people on ice and hand them a knife, considering worksafe etc.

We have few people claiming the dole, apart from some unemployable.
The majority that do evade work are on some kind of disability
pension. You can't drag them to work in chains!

People also seem unwilling to leave family and friends, to find
employment. Once again, you can't force them to move interstate
or move to where the work is.

So the WA meat industry issue is not about training, not about
pay, not about corporations thinking short term. Its about a
booming economy here. People would rather sit on a machine for
BHP for big money, then on a kill floor. Meatworks work is not
what alot of people would like to do for a living.

Meantime the industry still needs staff. Trucking a million sheep
over East, is not an answer. If Aussies simply don't want these
jobs, there seems no other option. Bring in contract labour from
SE Asia. Its no further from here then Sydney. We'll keep
creating export $ here, but give us a break. Don't lump us in
with what you guys are doing over there.

Identifying the adoption of AWA's in New Zealand with changes in productivity growth is hardly a statistically significant relationship. As anyone with the most basic understanding of economics knows, there is a lot more to productivity than the type of contract people will sign.

What the socialists want everyone to think is that under work choices collective bargaining will be gone, it won’t. What is clear is that if Labour wins the next election, workers will lose the flexibility, and the ability to negotiate their own employment agreements that AWA's provide. Even though the troglodytes don't think so, work choices is exactly what it says it is, it provides choices.