the Banner Bright

A group of wealthy restaurateurs used an article in The Age yesterday to whinge about the supposed complexity of wage laws, with one — Chris Lucas — calling for an amnesty “to allow employers to make adjustments without fear of being publicly attacked or fined”. The uncritical article did not point out that the Lucas Group is under investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman over an alleged failure to pay overtime — not a question of complexity, just a business decision to use annualised salaries and then fail to conduct an annual reconciliation. Today, The Age’s Ben Schneiders had to provide the missing balance while also revealing a leaked audit by Chris Lucas’s accountant that showed a total wage discrepancy of $340,000 in one year: “Some staff had been paid $10,000 per year less than they should have received as compared to the minimum rates of the award.” (The company claims all workers have been fully paid; the workers disagree.) So why did yesterday’s article read more like a PR piece? Perhaps because its author, Dani Valent, also runs a food business that depends on her connections with high profile chefs. She has upcoming events at Vue de Monde and Maha — both of which are under investigation for alleged annualised salary rip-offs. What a cosy little club.

David Peetz’s new book, The Realities and Futures of Work, is an engaging and thorough overview of existing and likely future working arrangements, and a well-grounded argument for reform: “The danger technology poses to workers through increased algorithmic management and ‘not there’ employment is arguably greater than the danger of technological job loss. Much of that must be addressed by broader social and economic policies… but some relates to the specific workplace factors that influence workers’ power. There are changes in several countries needed to the legal and institutional framework for bargaining that affect workers’ ability to gain from higher productivity… these include enabling multiemployer bargaining, reforming procedures for terminating agreements and industrial action, and indeed reforming the concept of the right to take collective action. … In all countries, core capital — be it in the form of franchisors, large brand names or head contractors — needs to be held accountable for underpayment of labour or other law-breaking within the chain. Neither employment law nor competition law should obstruct labour from bargaining with entities other than the direct employer, since ‘not there’ employment is often used not just to reduce pay and conditions but as a ruse to prevent adequate bargaining.” (It’s available as a free download thanks to ANU Press.)

The NSW South Coast Labour Council has launched a Recharge the Illawarra campaign — a push for a local Green New Deal. Arthur Rorris explains: “Port Kembla is geared to make big things. Maybe that is why we dream the big things too: our miners digging coal† to make the finest quality steel in our steelworks; the steel engineered to build wind turbines for the future; and our ports and rail network to deliver that across the country and the world. … So we are borrowing a line from our kids — we are not asking for action we are demanding it. … Let us dig and forge and build the big things. The big things for a decent future for us and our children.” The AMWU’s state secretary Steve Murphy adds that his members “are sick and tired of it being workers versus the environmental movement… We have a real opportunity for workers to be at the forefront of this change, and if there is going to be renewable jobs, for these jobs to be made here. We’re talking to our people in power stations, and they’re saying ‘we’re not loyal to coal, we’re not rusted on’… but what they don’t see is a plan for what their future job is.” It’s great to see the union movement being proactive about the necessary transition to a green economy.

† The coal referred to here is coking or metallurgical coal used in steel production. Some experts argue, “There is no greenhouse issue around coking coal frankly because there is no other way of making steel”. However, Greenpeace says, “In truth, coal is not essential to steelmaking — only to the dirtiest type of steelmaking”, arguing for more recycling of scrap steel as well as a shift to natural gas as a reductant in a cleaner steel production process.

Samuel Miller McDonald argues that the left should commit to shrinking the economy so that eco-fascists don’t control how it occurs: “A left-wing degrowth agenda could be a very good thing: in addition to halting our doomsday course, it plausibly could result in increased prosperity for most people as it would, by definition, entail mass redistribution of resources, even as economic growth slowed and reversed. One can envision much better lives of greater abundance, in both rural and urban contexts, under a postgrowth, egalitarian economy. … But a right-wing degrowth agenda would almost certainly result in less prosperity for most, and even great violence. It’s just as easy to imagine deeply savage governments pursuing aggressive degrowth agendas that do aim to make the economy more materially sustainable, but doing so through brutal austerity measures”. (I’m not convinced that de-growth should be the primary objective; it is politically a difficult message to sell and I think starting with redistribution will lead to a shift in economic priorities away from growth-at-all-costs anyway. But it’s a useful reminder that if we don’t make significant changes very soon, the future will be vicious.)

Aidan Harper argues that improving people’s work-life balance could also contribute to achieving necessary environmental change: “In 2008, the Utah state government carried out a mass trial of a four-day week with 18,000 employees (albeit working 10-hour days), in response to the financial crash and ensuing budget restrictions. By reducing the number of government employee commutes, it was estimated that the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with personal vehicle use — in relation to in-work behaviour — was the equivalent to taking a thousand cars off the road (which would have had a positive impact on air pollution too). … It is easy to think of the environmentally damaging things we do when we are resource rich but time-poor: driving instead of cycling, buying ready-made meals, weekend vacations, and energy intensive consumer products. A four-day week, combined with other policies which disincentive carbon intensive activities, could help shift our society towards one which engages in more sustainable behaviours. … [I]f the four-day week were a central part of a raft of sustainable policy changes within a Green New Deal, it could result in a change which cuts our ecological footprint in a way which could improve wellbeing, public health, and revitalise our communities.”

Environmental historian Jason Moore proposes the Capitalocene as “a kind of critical provocation to this sensibility of the Anthropocene”: it accepts that we are entering a new epoch, but denies that humanity itself is the problem, but rather “a highly unequal system of power and wealth”. It is an argument that a major realignment of our economic goals and systems can pull us back from the brink — and that the pressure of climate crisis creates a revolutionary moment: “I would just remind everyone that climate change is bad for ruling classes. It’s miserable for all the rest of us over the time spans of 10 and 20 and 30 years, that we’re all going to be living through very difficult times. But there will also be times at which the 1 percent, in whatever form that takes, will be thoroughly and radically destabilized. I don’t think ruling classes are at all prepared for the kinds of political and cultural transformations that will occur in this period. We’re already seeing this in part around the generational shift and the fact that now we can talk about socialism. That’s really the first time since maybe 1970 to ’75 we could do it in a public way. Capitalism is much less resilient than most people credit it. It had its social legitimacy, because in one way or another it could promise development. And I don’t think anyone takes that idea seriously anymore.”