By Lou Gugenberger
The Hilmer Report and the subsequent "competition policy reforms" are now law in both the Commonwealth and the states.
They will have a greater effect on the lives of all Australians, it is suggested, than the Harvester judgment in 1907, which gave the legal basis for a social contract. This contract established de jure that an employer had certain responsibilities towards an employee in both payments and work conditions. The Harvester judgment has been the basis for industrial legislation and social justice for most of this century and is now being dismantled under the competition policy reforms.
The genesis of the competition policy reforms is to be found in the works of Professor Frederick G. Hilmer and related publications. In 1985, Hilmer argued that Australian workers, management and unions had reached a state of disequilibrium which was leading to inefficiency and uncompetitiveness and that reform was on the agenda for the national interest.
Industrial relations is a key area of life where fundamental changes were required because competition for markets is now global. The Business Council of Australia decided to sponsor the search for a new path for industrial relations; a path described as ensuring that all Australians were able to have a better working life, contribute to their own individual potential and be paid better as a consequence.
Some readers might remember former Treasurer Dawkins, in a rare fit of honesty, saying that the Labor government had been carrying out the policies of the Business Council of Australia.
Hilmer's "reforms" would more accurately be described as "reaction": loss of industrial gains since the Harvester judgment; loss of social contract terms; loss of social wage; super profits for capital.
The argument goes that historically, the Australian workplace has been characterised by conflict — by unnecessary and unproductive divisions between management and unions, between salaried and award-based employees, between skilled workers and production employees. This can be remedied by competitiveness through workplace reforms.
Hilmer's magnum opus, The National Competition Policy Review, is some 400 pages covering practically all aspects of the Australian economy and recommendations for radical reform. This article will confine itself to the public sector.
"Historically, government-owned businesses have lagged behind their private sector counterparts in terms of efficiency", Hilmer claims. In the case of rail, electricity, water and gas utilities for example, the Industry Commission has identified opportunities for increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by over 2% or $8 billion per annum."
What the Hilmer Report does, amongst other things, is to prepare the ground for corporatisation, privatisation and competition in public sector enterprises.
The legal base now exists to corporatise and privatise practically all public sector utilities and businesses. The few exceptions are: taxes, levies, fees for licences, granting licences, certain other transactions.
Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett has privatised electricity in that state; the Labor government in Canberra has partly sold the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas in full. The South Australian government is in the process of privatising water. Telecom is now Telstra and Optus. No-one seems to want to purchase Australian National Lines.
One industrial implication of all this is "downsizing" of the work force. Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley calls it "rightsizing" to make the enterprises more efficient and competitive. It is already resulting in massive job losses and the loss of working conditions as contracts replace awards.
As enterprises become more "competitive and efficient", the social wage — such social gains as maternity services, hospitals, kindergartens, child-care centres, schools and even tertiary education — must operate in the market. That is, the user must pay.
The social wage of maternity allowances, allowances for invalids, widows, single parents and the aged must all operate within market principles and competition and efficiency. Utilities such as water and gas — not to mention roads and railways — must conform to the "user pays" principle.
Water in Britain has become unaffordable to low income people, unemployed and single mothers.
In France, workers and students went on strike for three weeks because the Juppé-Chirac government wanted to reduce the social wage.
In Italy, the now fallen Berlusconi government wanted to privatise primary education, while in New Zealand industrial gains and the social wage have been dramatically altered for the worse while the privileges and profits of the rich have increased.
In the USA, the Gingrich "contract with America" is in the process of reducing the social wage regarding education, health and other services.
While no case can be made for inefficiency and poor management, changes must not be made at the expense of the poor, the voiceless, the vulnerable and the marginalised. The gains of the last century in terms of working conditions, a decent wage and a just social wage must be maintained and even enhanced.
For over 100 years, generations of Australians, the trade union movement and others have worked for social justice and a just wage, or economic rights and human rights principles. These cannot be surrendered to mere economic principles of efficiency without taking into account principles of social justice, economic justice and human rights.
[Abridged from the newsletter of the Reworking Australia Movement.]