Sue Bolton

The Labor Party has again undercut the union movement’s campaign against the Coalition government’s plans for broad-sweeping attacks on workers’ rights.

On July 29, in response to a journalist’s question about whether a Labor government would abolish Australian Workplace Agreements, leader Kim Beazley said: “We are going to abolish the capacity of Australian Workplace Agreements to undermine collective awards. We're going to weight the balance of this in favour of collective agreements.”

Beazley confirmed on Perth radio station 6PR that Labor’s policy was not to abolish AWAs, but to change the legislation so that AWAs could not undermine industrial awards or collective agreements. He said AWAs would be made so unattractive to employers that they would not use them.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet responded in the Daily Telegraph: “At no time since Mr Beazley has been leader again has he … indicated that AWAs are going to be abolished, though that is party policy”. Beazley’s comments have generated a lot of criticism from unions and other Labor MPs.

The fact that the Labor leader can override a decision of the party’s national conference indicates how unreliable the ALP is as an ally in the campaign against the Coalition’s attacks.

According to a report in the August 5 Australian, Beazley justified his position to a meeting of NSW Labor Right parliamentarians by arguing that Labor risked the votes of 1 million people employed under individual agreements or who were self-employed if it promised to abolish AWAs. He then warned the parliamentarians that PM John Howard would run a scare campaign if Labor stood by its proposed abolition of AWAs.

Beazley’s new position may be more accurately explained by some employers’ message to the ALP after the last federal election that it had lost their support because then-leader Mark Latham had committed to abolish AWAs.

Given that award wages and conditions haven’t kept up with the gains won by unions in enterprise bargaining agreements, Beazley’s promise that AWAs could be designed so they don’t undermine the conditions of collective awards should be cold comfort to workers. Some companies and federal government departments are refusing to negotiate new enterprise bargaining agreements with the union and then offering AWAs to workers as their only option to get a pay increase. Thereafter, successive AWAs can whittle away wages and conditions as the collective bargaining power of the workers is broken down.

This is the second time that the ALP has undercut the campaign against the anti-union laws. Last month, when the ACTU exposed the fact that the Howard government’s proposed changes would allow employers to pressure workers into cashing in part of their annual leave, the government was able to retort that the Western Australian Labor government had retained this element of the previous state Coalition government’s anti-union laws.

From Green Left Weekly, August 10, 2005.
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