Take a nap, Tapp.

Well written Julia. There's been a great deal of deception and lack of transparency by Howard about the real and projected impact of Work Choices.

You are to be congratulated by being up-front with your IR policies. That is what electors need and expect to help them in evaluating contending claims.

The debate is set to be muddied further as we are now being flooded with tax-payer funded advertising gloss on Howard's latest changes to Work Choices. Howard has no credability as his Ministers refuse FOI applications on government research papers on the relevant issues.

I am particularly impressed that you are eliminating red tape with a one-stop shop for IR issue resolution under a National IR system.

Having six states with inconsistent IR laws and industrial commissions makes as much sence as 6 different guage rail networks.

Best wishes for your success in 2007.

Billie says: "... the only workers on very good pay belong to militant unions with strong bargaining power."

This is an over-simplification. Militant unionists aren't the only workers who get a good wage, although they were largely the ones who "patented" the pattern for a lot of workers to follow.

Like all things, there is good and bad in the workplace: without unions many other workers wouldn't have had the confidence to ask for better wages because they couldn't have broken the employer's power nexus on their own and, on the negative side, by getting better wages for their members, unions have effectively distorted the wage balance in the economy, causing employers to rip off more vulnerable workers in the workforce (eg childcare and hospitality workers) to balance the books. It's like pressing in a balloon - as it holds a finite amount of air, it just bulges out somewhere else. Of course in the union narrative, you never hear about the losers.

The real message in all this is that the unions, if they’re going to survive in any form in future, need to be more widely representative of the community and workers. It means compromising on their traditional strengths.

Unions cause employers to rip off thier workers! What are you smoking?

Julia

like the rest of these pollies in canberra have forgotton one thing
our constitution.

It also seems to be the norm that our constitution of 1900 is a relic well its not. There is much that is widley assumed but not legal.

As a matter of fact they dont even belong there.

www.tapp.org.au

Hedgehog,

You show what you get when you combine a comprehension problem with blind ideology.

The point I was making is there is only so much dough in the economy. If business is to stay afloat - they get mugged by reality too! - then they have to "cut their cloth" in terms of paying their costs, including wages. They will then take it out - and, in fact, are forced to take it out because of AIRC rulings in the past - on those least well-organised/protected workers to stay competitive. And, yes, the success of unions in other areas of the economy indirectly causes this. At least until the country gets wealthier overall.

It's too convenient for the unions to pretend that those workers who do well are representative across the whole economy. The only way everyone will do well is when the country is wealthy enough to pay everyone better. And who will be DIRECTLY resposible for this? Obviously business is, because they are the wealth creators. Unions are only a handbrake on true economic progress!