From Crikey about the Fair Work Act (FWA) and ABS’ release yesterday of data collating the number of strike days lost:
The FWA was bad for industrial disputes, we were told, because it would give unions an unprecedented right to interfere with matters that were rightly “management prerogative”. “The fair-work laws extended the right to strike because they extended the right of unions to take strike action over contracting and outsourcing disputes,” complained Peter Anderson of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2011.
…It had “unleashed an adversarial culture which has resulted in a rising number of disputes and unreasonable claims by some unions,” according to the Business Council’s Jennifer Westacott in December 2011.
…Australian Industry Group industrial relations manager Stephen Smith in March 2012 said the level of industrial disputation “hasn’t been this bad for quite a few years now, not since 2007,”…
…Then there was Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox, cited in December 2012 telling The Australianthat, in the journalist’s words, “the further increase in working days lost highlighted the need for the government to change the laws to more tightly define the issues that can be the subject of bargaining claims”…
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
