The government cannot FORCE anybody NOT to remain on AWA if that is their preferred option. However, for those forced onto AWA's they will be given back their ability to return to collective agreements. This is not about removing individual choice, but, is aimed at returning a degree of choice back to those who have none whatever under the new IR package. The only side with policies aimed squarely it would seem at causing radicalization of workplaces and a return to closed shop employment is the Liberal Party.

Unfortunately, what is next, the rights that you trade for extra wages now, will not exist at all in the future, then what will you trade? Will you be forced to accept lower wages? What of the estimated 1+ million Australians currently on welfare that will be returned to work? As they are currently not counted as unemployed, what effect will this have on employment rates? What effect will it have on your bargaining position?

The only choice, if you value your own and your children's ability to earn a fair days pay for a fair days work is Labour.... Otherwise we will embark on possibly the worst option for many, direct competition with China & India for wages (good for Corporations but).

Christian,

Your argument might make sense if you incorporate another form of wage restraint and the creation of incentives in the tax system. Any serious discussion of ALP incomes policy must start with an assessment of wage-tax-trade-offs, and why it is superior to Howard's less fair method of redistribution up the scale.

Read: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4644

Labor must seriously consider how it will get unemployment to Full Employment levels at higher rates of participation. The letter of the five-economists to JWH in 1998 is still the logical starting point in my view.

High minimum wages can be a cause of poverty as well as an alleviator - Labor must be honest in its assessments.

You do your position credit if you can consider this in depth.

Corin

Current mininum wage Australia $Oz 12-80 / hr
Current min imun wage U S A $Oz 6-42 / hr , unchanged since 1996, while U S politicians salary rose by $OZ 30,000-00 in the same period. Anybody got a list of directors who have salary sacrificed "for the good of the country"?

Aspro, your view is articluate and the spirit is right. I accept that the W-T-T-O policy has that limitation if management don't also accept responsibility.

The point of good IR policy is for people to move off awards to more tailored arrangement to the workplace in question ("enterprise arrangements") but for appropriate safeguards to exist (i.e. holidays, maternity L, union representation if requested, etc).

Part of the problem with Labor's "classical" approach to IR is it gets the second part right but not the first. The flipside could summarise the problem with the Liberal approach - mind that their success in getting AWA's off the ground has been poor til now.

Also what is worth considering in detail are the disemployment effects of high minimum wages (highest in OECD), and indeed single parent families are shown to be worse off often because of high rates in Australia.

Put simply Australia has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the OECD and this has contributed to poverty existing: Draw your own conclusion as to why it has happened??

Lastly - I don't think many would now disagree with a view that education and skills create the basis for wealth, rather than collectrive bargaining: not that this is an argument against collective bargaining - simply that "progressives" would do better arguing about the ladder of opportunity being predominantly about education rather than explicitly about IR. Labor is failing to consider long-term needs by simply assuming that the under-skilled simply want awards rather than a proper investment of skills creating value for the less skilled.

If award recipients only want to sit on awards for the rest of their lives - if they keep a job - they will be very vulnerable as the early 90's showed - oh yeah great! people should want more.

If we counted differently would Australia have a low workforce participation rate, NO.
In my experience there is no work for people over 50 with any level of education, limited skilled work for educated refugees, reduced work in the manufacturing sector. Anecdotally there are shortages of seasonal workers as fruit pickers, labourers, meat workers. Backpackers work in office jobs that skilled Australians have not even been considered for. On trams in St Kilda Rd you see Indians bought into do IT jobs sneering at the shabbily dressed lazy white trash who used to work in IT and pay off their mortgages and pay their kids school fees.

Labour hire firms like Hudson and Julia Ross, claiming a skills shortage often gain far more by importing workers rather than hiring locals.

Anecdotally, again because statistics are not collected, 80% of Australian university graduates scratch around on a cocktail of part time work for about 7 years to establish themselves in a meaningful job on sufficient salary to live.

These are the workers who are adversely affected by AWAs, who have to sign the agreements to get a foot on the employment ladder. The conditions they work under are not sufficient to live on. My experience as a casual after school carer was I would be rung each day for shifts of up to 4 hours. One day I appeared and because children had withdrawn at the last minute I was sent home without a shift. My experience as an emergency teacher is I am rung at 7:30 am to be at work of 8:15am. There is limited work outside winter.

I have watched a single mother train at TAFE as a nurse then start work for a church aged care facility that was notorious for offering new hires week end shifts when they were understaffed – lifting distressed patients. The new hires weren’t rostered on enough shifts to earn more than $500 per fortnight, so the taxpayer continues to support this household that had incurred extra debt of TAFE fees, nurse registration fees and running a car to get to work.

Maybe Beazley would not have a difficult time if the first line was put in the positive instead of the negative:
"Kim Beazley has had a difficult time trying to sell his plan to abolish AWAs to business groups."
Would be better as:
"Business groups have had a difficult time trying to accept Kim Beazley's plan to abolish AWAs"
Christian Seibert is an economist, not a humanist.