Will workers come first at the Jobs and Skills Summit?
If we need an economy that is both “pro business and pro worker”, then what kind of economy do we have now?
ACTU Secretary Sally McManus will attend the Jobs and Skills Summit that is gathering momentum and public interest, after ten years of neglectful government in the service of business interests that have dominated the discussion on employment. But will the change of government bring a change of fortunes, or, after all this time, will workers once again be asked to again suck on lemons, while the business community helps itself to another round of free lemonade?
Representatives from government, industry and trade unions will also attend, and many workers in the country have been struggling to keep up and they look to the summit for solutions to what Australians consider simple yet crucial problems. The dearth of meaningful real wage increases stands in stark contrast to the glut of corporate profits, and the lack of ability for meaningful collective bargaining stifles working Australians inhibiting their ability to negotiate for a fair share.
Speaking clearly in the lead-up to the summit, McManus points out that in a in a service based care economy, with fewer large sector employers, multi-employer bargaining is essential. Labor was elected on a “mandate to get wages moving”, and McManus points squarely to the elephant in Jim Chalmers’ barely filled Treasurers office; the need to have a “critical mass of people who can collectively bargain to push wages up”. Recent agreements with the small business council are a positive sign, but without the involvement of the entire business community, the dire need for industry and sector wide enterprise bargaining reform will go begging.
All this talk of the business sector being the arbiters and gatekeepers to achieving any outcome with wages has been at the expense of recognising the power of the workforce to effect outcomes and the need to ensure their ability to negotiate wages. The industrial sector has lived through Halcyon days has had the luxury of airing its laundry on all forms of media with the support of the corporate journalistic class, who spruik the benefits of exploitable immigrant labour in op-eds and panel talk programs. The balance has been off for a while.
Labor went to great pains to secure the stamp of the business community on all their major policy initiatives throughout the campaign, but it wasn’t the masters of industry that put them into power. Millions of workers who struggle to get through a modern average Australian week have elected this government to protect their future. The average Australian worker could be forgiven for thinking that a jobs summit ought to be a credible attempt to fix a broken system that has seen corporate profits shoot away from real wages for over a decade, and not a horse-trade to keep wages low and free up resources for the duopolies and titans who often come first in the political discussion.
Ten years of wage stagnation have evolved into real wage cuts in the face of inflation, sending shockwaves of fear and uncertainty through working Australians. Between Albo sculling drinks in solidarity from the balcony at the Enmore, and the impressive preferred PM poll results, real wages have decreased another 3.0% on inflation, and people are taking on fast debt on to pay winter heating bills. The gender pay-gap looms over this country as an enduring challenge, and the highly feminised workplaces that suffer are full of voters that actually elected this government. Australians are poor in ways not seen in over a generation, and the muted response to the publicly scorned Stage three tax cuts juxtaposes against the publicly felt rising poverty levels. Many Australians need wage increases now and get an uneasy feeling when the government says it cannot address the issue, along with many others, until at least 2024.
Productivity is the main line muttered when entertaining the need for real wage growth amongst the business community. But when they say productivity must go up, beleaguered workers, on the front lines and facing real wage falls and deteriorating conditions, hear “you aren’t working hard enough”. There is a cruelty to say such things at this time, especially when put next to the productivity of corporate and shareholder profits, and the stagnant wages that feed the workers that generate them. Collective bargaining has been hung, drawn and quartered by the business elite, who have become drunk on profits and tax avoidance, and who walked arm in arm with the anti-worker former government in the stagnant era of John Howards’ Workchoices. Demanding workers cede any more ground after all of that would be unreasonable in this climate. Wouldn’t it?
We are not talking about some pothole in the road to here, we are talking about working families living out of cars on the edge of it. This is something that cannot be appeased with uninspired ideas or the pro-business status quo. Compounding and genuine problems sink millions under the rising poverty level and the interest rates that drown them, seeping into the integrity of the running gears of our society. A rippling effect envelops entire communities, desperation and destitution mount on real people. The cost of living, rising interest rates, a lack of job security and the dismantlement of the dignity of work - so much has changed in these years. Except the wages.
In a seller’s market, with labour pools so valuable, now is the time to discuss meaningful wage rises, and a good opportunity for unions to have an important discussion about redefining standards of living in this country. Influencers from the concentrated media, alongside the dregs of the former government, warn that the summit could be a union free-for-all and that it’s a dangerous and ideologically regressive approach to snatch power by the union movementThis propaganda would be a laughable were it not so entrenched, or such a prominent voice in the discussion about the lives of millions, spoken by those who cannot understand how they suffer, who promote the disparity of wealth in this country.
The Commonwealth Bank have just taken a $10 Billion cash profit while slugging the solarplexus of the punter through rate rises, Alan Joyce has personally made over $100 million during the last decade while sacking his proud staff during a pandemic, and large, profit-driven companies still count most of the benefits of jobkeeper — while it ran out for most of us pretty quickly — potentially along with some superannuation no one could afford to spend.
So many jobs are vacant, and the business community weeps on the airwaves to allow more access to an unprotected and vulnerable migrant labour force, but they helped to conjure this neoliberal nightmare sometime back when Howard dropped Work Choices in ’06, and are the principal architects of Australia’s broken employment system. All the emergency talk about the alarming shortage of labour is speaking to resourcing issues, choosing to place foreign labour as the panacea, but it speaks less of the lower participation rates, the unfair conditions, a lack of avenues to fair collective bargaining processes, the gender pay gaps, and the environment that may be driving labour shortages.
When The Prime Minister spoke at the National Press Club on Monday, he admitted “none of us imagine that a two-day summit will entirely fix wages and job security” yet hoped that it would enable a “culture of cooperation” that would foster “a renewed understanding between unions and industry and small businesses”. Labour shortages, CPI increases, demand for skills and vacancies through multiple sectors put the ball in the employer’s court and the power back in the hands of the employee for the first time in years, and the carping and braying from the business community in the captive sections of the narrow media shows just how spooked they are that a real opportunity to wrest some control of the narrative back from them has presented itself.
After over a decade of one-way corporate profit driven employment models that have yet to address crucial issues like the gender pay gap, the jobs summit should prioritise securing better conditions for neglected and restrained workers and ensure working Australians can live with dignity. Anything less will involve marginalised workers compromising their already desperate position.
It’s a nice idea Albanese puts out there, but right now as it stands, how do you have an economy that is both “pro business and pro worker”, when the business has all the money and the worker has none? The government is watching employer-employee relations reach a crossroads that have not been seen for more than a generation. It may want to have a win for everyone, but at the end it must favour one side. Will that side be that of the worker who has been doing it tough, or the business community that have been reaping ever increasing rewards?
While wages have stalled and big business done well in recent years, this reality is not universal as many SME have been decimated by forced government lockdowns, essentially sacrificed, so as to protect under-funded and resourced hospitals.There is now a quiet resignation of failed businesses, liquidating after failing to navigate 2 years of forced business closure where some businesses were government mandated to incur losses in the hundred of thousands, while attracting subsidies of less than 20% of losses. SME with turnover less than $10 mill had to qualify for Jobkeeper via quarterly statements. These failed businesses are now largely ignored, swept aside and bundled with the carnage of regular business failure. Auctions houses are running a brisk trade selling off hard won assets and businesses built over decades of toil, business that in many cases have been forced to fail through no fault of their own!