An official complaint to Guardian head office

This is pathetic from The Guardian Australia today:

More needs to be done to tackle employers outsourcing and subcontracting work to drive down wages, Labor’s shadow industrial relations minister Brendan O’Connor has suggested.

In comments to be delivered at the National Press Club on Wednesday, O’Connor will make the case for expanding bargaining beyond a worker’s direct employer, arguing that many people are employed in workplaces without a union representative.

The comments stop short of endorsing Australian Council of Trade Union demands for the option of industry-level bargaining but suggest Labor will consider a form of multi-employer bargaining in sectors that lack adequate industrial representation.

O’Connor has been locked in negotiations with the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, and the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, ahead of next week’s Labor national conference, with platform changes to respond to union demands to fix collective bargaining likely to be significant issues.

In excerpts of the speech, seen by Guardian Australia, O’Connor accuses larger employers of “outsourcing their labour to smaller employers – through franchises, subsidiaries and related corporate entities, subcontracting, independent contracting (both real and sham) and labour hire”.

“This practice means that it is less likely that a worker is employed by the economic decision-maker – their wages are effectively set by the head of the chain, not by their direct employer,” he says.

“It makes it harder for workers to collectively bargain, because although they may work at the same site or in the same business, it is not necessarily for the same employer.”

Labor has announced it will legislate so that employees of labour hire firms are paid the same as workers in the businesses they are placed in doing the same work.

O’Connor will argue that labour hire, outsourcing and subcontracting “set up a situation where the only point of competitive tension in the industry is the cost of labour”.

Not mentioned once in the article is this. Via Domain:

…In a speech to be delivered ahead of ALP national conference this weekend, Mr O’Conner [Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations] will focus on how the market is “not delivering, particularly for low and middle income earners”.

“[A] Labor government will tackle the issues in the workplace relations system that are contributing to wage stagnation – the modern precariousness of work, widespread underpayment of workers, and declining collective bargaining,” he says.

Mr O’Connor will say there were more than 1.6 million temporary visa holders with work rights in Australia who should not be used as “cheap labour”. He says it was not surprising many Australians felt insecure in their jobs when work was being outsourced.

He says no worker on a skilled visa should be doing a job for a day longer than it takes to train an Australian worker. “Local workers should always be given the first shot at local jobs,” he says.

The central issue for Labor’s policies is to better manage the impact of temporary migrants on Australian wages. How can The Guardian Australia cover it without any mention of this? This is grotesque self-censorship of facts, not opinion.

We have repeatedly noted The Guardian Australia’s refusal to cover immigration-related policy issues objectively, especially with reference to its economic data journalist, Greg Jericho, who has openly declared he is too squeamish:

Immigration – because there are many desperate to hate – must be treated with extreme care by politicians and journalists, and certainly with more care than Abbott seems capable. The inherently racist parties will seek to use any discussion and any seeming evidence of the negative impact of migrants as fuel to burn their fires of hate.

Australia is not some hotbed of racism, such that it must sacrifice its workers to keep a few wowserish journalists happy. On the contrary, Australians widely support multiculturalism despite having the highest rate in the developed world. That is, so long as the negative impacts of mass immigration, which are clear in Australia’s lagging wages, crush-loaded infrastructure, and sky high house prices, are addressed. But how can they be when immigration is no longer a word that can be mentioned? The self-censorship of The Guardian Australia is now breeding the very resentments it purports to fight.

Ironically, The Guardian worldwide today has an excellent expose attacking Chinese propaganda. Yet it’s Australian operation is actively engaged in it.

The Scott Trust was founded on the following principles:

The core purpose of The Scott Trust is:

• to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner

• all other activities should be consistent with the central objective. The Company which the Trust owns should: be managed to ensure profits are available to further the central objective; not invest in activities which conflict with the values and principles of the Trust

• the values and principles of the Trust should be upheld throughout the Group. The Trust declares a subsidiary interest in promoting the causes of freedom in the press and liberal journalism, both in Britain and elsewhere.

The values of The Scott Trust

The Manchester Guardian was founded in the liberal interest to support reform in the early 19th century. The ethos of public service has been part of the DNA of the newspaper and Group ever since.

CP Scott, the famous Manchester Guardian editor, outlined the paper’s principles in his celebrated centenary leader on May 5, 1921.

The much-quoted article is still used to explain the values of the present-day newspaper, Trust and Group. It is also recognised around the world as the ultimate statement of values for a free press.

Among the many well known lines are the assertions that ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’, that newspapers have ‘a moral as well as a material existence’ and that ‘the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard’. The values he described are: honesty; cleanness (today interpreted as integrity); courage; fairness; and a sense of duty to the reader and the community.

The Guardian Australia clearly has an editorial fatwa on coverage of immigration-related issues regardless of whether they negatively impact the group’s traditional base of readers, those concerned with progressive society and policy, which most definitely includes the well-being of workers regardless of ethnicity.

Consider this an official complaint that The Guardian Australia has betrayed the principles of the Scott Trust and group management should either sanction or sack current editorial staff to shift its point of view back towards the coverage of fact which is the basis of the group’s fine principles.