It looks like Morrison might back down on undercutting the Better Off Overall Test, but, as Shaun Carney points out, that isn’t the worst of his IR omnibus: “Wage stagnation is a serious ongoing problem in Australia. Real wages have barely moved in the past seven years. The share of national income that goes to workers has been falling since the 1970s — right now, it’s below 50 per cent for the first time in 60 years — while the profit share has correspondingly been rising. This is hurting low-paid workers and those who are stuck in casual positions especially, and it is needs to be addressed. There isn’t much in the new bill that’s going to turn it around. The proposals do little to deliver greater job security or even create new jobs because they hand employers greater powers to define any employee as a casual and to give part-time workers more hours at cheaper rates than they would get at the moment. … It’s hard to see what the government would have had to lose by going further and offering a better deal for low-paid workers. Certainly, it would have grumpy employer groups to contend with, but where would they and their members go politically — to Labor or the Greens? … In a time when politics is all too often an exercise in marketing, it had been too much to hope for.”

The Centre for Future Work’s Jim Stanford explains how Morrison wants to use covid as an excuse to ram through a wave of wage-cutting, non-union agreements: “Australia is unique among wealthy nations in allowing employers to unilaterally implement enterprise agreements, without involvement by a union. The BOOT is thus necessary to prevent enterprise agreements from undermining award rights. The bill proposes suspending BOOT for two years. But even if it were restored after that (which is uncertain), agreements approved during that window would remain in effect (enterprise agreements typically last four years). Even after they expire, under Australian law they remain in effect until replaced by a new agreement, or terminated by the FWC — neither of which is likely in a non-unionised workplace. Apparently in anticipation that unions will actively oppose non-BOOT-compliant agreements, the bill also includes measures to speed their approval by the Fair Work Commission. The process must be completed within 21 days (with some exceptions). This will limit the ability of affected workers to learn about and resist their loss of benefits and conditions. Unions will be restricted from intervening around agreements they were not directly involved in negotiating (including intervening against agreements that had no union involvement at all).”

Bernard Keane and Glen Dyer [$]: “In a clear triumph of right-wing ideology and business self-interest over economic growth and the advice of the Reserve Bank, the government intends to directly undermine wages growth by locking in what will amount to a ‘worse off overall’ test for the next two years for workers. That’s the proper name for Christian ‘Public Bar’ Porter’s proposal to allow businesses to cut wages in enterprise agreements based on a vague ‘public interest test’ — with workers knowing they can be pushed back to award minimums if they fail to agree to them. While references to Workchoices and its return have been a dime a dozen for the past twelve years, this proposal is straight from that ill-starred Howard government reform program that saw wages cut and labour productivity slump. … What level of wages growth is low enough for the government? It’s nearly down to 1% now. Does it want zero wages growth? Does it want negative wages growth? … It is workers and households that have been the heroes of the recovery. While business has hidden in its bunker, Australians have endured lockdown, complied with often draconian restrictions on their freedom, then emerged to get back to work and start spending in exactly the way the government has urged them to. Their reward for that? Workchoices 2.0, designed to undermine their wages and further tilt the industrial relations playing field in favour of employers. It’s vicious, ideological and idiotically self-defeating.”

Credulous journalists continue to uncritically report farmers’ complaints about “lazy” and “unreliable” workers — meanwhile, research continues to show extreme exploitation is rife in the fruit picking industry: “McKell Institute researcher Edward Cavanough, who co-authored the report for the AWU, says some foreign workers are being paid as little as $3 an hour. ‘If workers were being paid the appropriate rate on these farms, it would be around $24 an hour. We’re very rarely seeing workers get that much,’ Mr Cavanough said. ‘Some of the stories have been absolutely harrowing. A lot of working holiday-makers are having terrible experiences with subcontractors. We’ve seen incidents of workers getting abused, trying to chase money from their employer. These are some of the worst cases of worker exploitation you’ll see in Australia.’ … AWU national secretary Daniel Walton said… ‘We’ve seen worker exploitation with passports being taken, we’ve seen sexual assault and physical violence. The concerning thing for us is that it’s getting worse, not better,’ Mr Walton said.” Strangely, farmers are very quick to contact journalists to make assertions, without evidence, about lazy workers — but they are very hard to pin down when confronted with evidence of exploitation by their contractors: “The ABC contacted three blueberry farms in the Coffs Harbour region for comment but calls were not returned.”

Rick Morton: “There are 612 private and non-profit nursing homes in Victoria with more than 50,000 beds. Almost 2000 Covid-19 cases were recorded among residents in these homes during the second wave, and they accounted for 655 deaths. A further 1294 infections were acquired by aged-care workers in these facilities. By contrast, in Victoria’s 156 state-run residential aged-care homes, which have more than 5600 beds, there were only three residents who contracted coronavirus and zero deaths. This was an infection rate of 0.1 per cent, compared with more than 6 per cent in the state’s private aged-care network. There is one key difference between the private aged-care market and Victoria’s state-run homes: only the latter has legislated minimum staffing ratios that govern clinical care of residents. … Victoria’s state-run facilities have the highest staffing ratios anywhere in the country. According to research released by the aged-care royal commission, public aged-care homes run by the Victorian government, and a handful in other states, are the best performing in the country in 21 of 24 clinical indicators. They are also the best performing in all 14 of the other quality benchmarks, which include resident feedback and workforce conditions. The royal commission found that, in 2018-19, a total of 119 qualified nursing staff minutes were spent on each resident in each state-run facility every day. This is more than three times what’s spent in the private and non-profit sector, where the Commonwealth requires no minimum staff ratios.”

The Transport Workers’ Union’s Michael Kaine: “In just the past two months, five delivery drivers have been killed in Australia – the ones we know of since they are not recorded as workplace deaths. The deaths represent the total failure of a system which never should have been allowed to thrive. It’s a system that denies its workers sick leave, the right to challenge unfair sackings, training, protective gear and insurance. It stands as a blatant contradiction of the working conditions generations of Australians fought for. Riders get no minimum pay and are pushed to work at breakneck speed. Yet they have no right to training or proper protective gear. Multinational corporations such as Uber and Amazon promote themselves as shiny and futuristic. Yet they reap billions the same way their industrialists forefathers did: off the backs of vulnerable, voiceless workers. We’ve allowed their gig economy to quietly establish itself as an unregulated, secondary labour market. … Workers need rights that are enshrined in law and an independent tribunal system that can hear their concerns and give them the benefits and protections they need. In New South Wales independent contractors who own their own trucks have long had access to a system which allows them to band together and demand standards for their work, including rates which cover all the costs of their labour and business. There is nothing impenetrable or futuristic about the exploitative model behind delivery apps. Australians have seen it all before and we can sort it out again with just a modicum of political will.”

Matt Wade: “The uber-rich are having a great pandemic. Despite the biggest economic downturn in living memory the Australian Financial Review’s latest Rich List revealed the combined worth of the nation’s 200 wealthiest individuals increased by about 25 per cent compared with last year. … Many of our wealthiest families were able to ride the pandemic storm then reap huge gains from the ‘V-shaped’ rebound in asset prices, led by technology firms. In Australia, some miners have benefited hugely from a China-fuelled iron ore boom. But there’s no V-shaped recovery in the real economy. Millions of workers lost their jobs or watched incomes shrink as the coronavirus outbreak pushed the economy into recession. Almost 1 million Australians are officially unemployed and the economy is still being propped up by government and Reserve Bank emergency measures eight months after the onset of the pandemic. The billionaires’ bonanza at a time of such deep economic crisis begs an important question: will the pandemic leave us a more unequal society?“ We will, because that is what we have chosen. Morrison has deliberately pushed people back into poverty, and now — egged on by the usual ideologues [$] — he is planning another attack on workers’ rights.

Rebecca Solnit: “Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito just complained that ‘you can’t say that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. Now it’s considered bigotry.’ This is a standard complaint of the right: the real victim is the racist who has been called a racist, not the victim of his racism, the real oppression is to be impeded in your freedom to oppress. And of course Alito is disingenuous; you can say that stuff against marriage equality (and he did). Then other people can call you a bigot, because they get to have opinions too, but in his scheme such dissent is intolerable, which is fun coming from a member of the party whose devotees wore ‘fuck your feelings’ shirts at its rallies and popularized the term ‘snowflake.’ Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naive version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. … But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?”

After earlier ruling a McDonalds franchisee was liable for its threats to ban toilet breaks, the Federal Court has imposed a significant penalty — $10,000 directly to the worker who stuck her neck out, and a further $76,000 to her union for taking the civil prosecution to court. After explaining his decision, Justice Logan added: “Ms Staines and the Union have each well-served the public interest. That is not an abstract concept. All Australians have an interest in the conduct of industrial relations, including the employment of workers, according to law. Parliament has provided for civil penalties to be imposed for contraventions of the FWA [Fair Work Act]. … Public resources allocated to police the FWA are limited. The financial ability of an individual worker to police a perceived contravention of the FWA is also in most cases limited. Workers, collectively, via a trade union, are thereby better equipped to do this. The policing by trade unions of compliance with industrial laws is a longstanding, legitimate role of trade unions. This does not just serve the interests of the particular workers concerned, or the trade union. It serves the national interest. … It is … important and necessary that the service of a trade union of a national interest be noted. For that reason, I conclude these reasons for judgment by recognising the service to the national interest by the Union in the circumstances of the present case.”