"Half a million workers on AWAs and probably as many again on WorkChoices CWAs have seized that opportunity to negotiate mutually acceptable rates."

Negotiate?

If, as you argue, employers will need to increase wages of pre fairness AWA employees, surely AWAs have cut wages?

Poor John, he can't take a trick. I also note the Tasmanian forests he said he would protect are being logged.

There’s a smell of hypocrisy, vested interest and special pleading in Graeme Haycroft’s article. His byline tells us that his own business, “Haycroft Workplace Solutions, has been one of Australia's biggest providers of AWAs”.

The gist of his argument: The Federal Government has spent $40 million of taxpayers' money coaxing [hardly any need for coaxing I would have thought] businesses to introduce IR changes. About 50,000 businesses have spent time and money with consultants to help manage ‘reform’; and 5000,000 workers on AWAs and about the same number on WorkChoices CWAs have “seized that opportunity [sic] to negotiate mutually acceptable rates”.

Now the Howard Government - shaken by a massive electoral backlash - has gone and introduced a fairness test which will ruin everything for these businesses and their consultants. This new fairness is so unfair. If only Howard hadn’t dropped the old No Disadvantage Test.

Fairness will render it “too hard and expensive to use Australian Workplace Agreements in order to operate profitably and compete.” Under the new fairness test, says Haycroft, the vast majority of businesses will, except in isolated circumstances, have to be pay new employees more than their existing workers – unless you bring the old workers back up to the old rates. It’s so unfair, says Haycroft!

And it will also be “politically disastrous” because, unless Howard reverses his reformed reforms, it will hurt Howard’s core constituency, small business, and they will be most unhappy John.

But Haycroft is living in cuckoo land if he thinks Howard will reverse WorkChoices Mark 2 before the election. (What he does afterwards if he somehow wins is of course another matter.)

Ever the realist, he had an epiphany and watered down WorkChoices – and tried to bury its deadly name – because it was going to cost him hundreds of thousands of votes - and it might still cost him an election even in its ‘fair’ form.

So small business owners are politically dispensable. To rub salt into their wounds they’ll even have to hand out Howard’s propaganda Fact Sheets (in press as we speak) before the election.

if you go on voting for politicians, year after year, should you complain when you're ruled by politicians?

...eh? There's a choice DEMOS?

Point me in that direction and I'll sign on!

graham - the award system was far better for small business - it meant that an employer could employ someone without having to pay consultants, lawyers, etc to draw up australian workplace agreements. both employer and employee knew the award rate, terms and conditions were fair - because employers and unions had had a forum through which to negotiate or put their views. the outcome through the australian industrial relations commission took into account the positions of employers and unions. if an employer paid more than the award rate or provided better conditions than those set out in the award, then s/he knew, and the employee knew, that above award conditions were being provided - hence a recognition and reward for those employees' productivity, etc.

in small business, workplace harmony is maintained if there is transparency of the wagefixing process - as was so under the award system. if an employee is unsure, s/he could always find out what the award conditions were. similarly for the employer. there was an objective, known and transparent standard by which employers and employees could measure wagerates and conditions of work.

all this is absent from the current 'workchoices' (sic) system. the current system is a recipe for upset and uncertainty amongst workers, with no way for the employer to affirm that the rates and conditions are 'fair' according to a nationally known and transparent standard.

apols - graeme, not graham