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Professor David Peetz: “What really needs simplifying in Australian IR is our enterprise bargaining system, which is remarkably complex. This is not because the ‘better off overall test’ means no worker can be made worse off by an agreement — something that irks some large corporations. It’s because the procedures tie worker representatives, in particular, in knots. … Australia’s enterprise bargaining provisions contain twice the number of pages of those in New Zealand’s Employment Relations Act, while the bar for prohibiting a strike is low. It is one thing to say (as a minority of OECD countries do), that strikes should be preceded by a secret ballot. It is another, less defensible thing to provide 24 pages of detailed prescription on how those ballots must be undertaken. Australia’s framework is much more complex than the comparable United Kingdom statute. Even the Productivity Commission, which is no friend of unions, has questioned the ‘overly complex processes for secret ballots’. … It is an oddity that, while awards have been simplified, the process of collective bargaining has been made remarkably complex in Australia. … To bring the system more in line with international practice on collective bargaining and industrial action, many restrictions should be removed.”

John Quiggin calls for a ‘Participation Income’ (similar to a UBI) and a Jobs Guarantee as the foundation of a post-Covid reform agenda: “The ideal response would be to use the JobSeeker and JobKeeper schemes as the basis for a fundamental transformation in our approach to work and welfare. JobSeeker could become the basis of a ‘participation income,’ set at a liveable level (say, equal to the age pension) and available to anyone with no market income and a willingness to contribute to the community, whether through job search, full-time study, volunteer work, or caring for children or disabled or elderly relatives. JobKeeper could be the starting point for a renewal of the commitment to full employment that was a central feature of the decades of widely shared prosperity after the second world war. In the absence of continued support from the federal government, neither the Reserve Bank of Australia nor the business sector has the capacity to prevent sustained high unemployment, even after lockdown restrictions are relaxed. If we truly want reform, we should not trawl through the remains of the neoliberal agenda of the late twentieth century. Rather, we should aim to achieve a positive transformation of our society and economy, and end this crisis better than we started it.”

Renee Burns on new rules that “reduced the access period for proposed changes to existing enterprise agreements from seven days to 24 hours”: “Unlike the recently implemented JobKeeper scheme, the regulations as made apply to all businesses covered by existing enterprise agreements; with no requirement to demonstrate a downturn in business or other COVID-19 related detriment. The regulations do share a sunset clause with other COVID-19 responses — with the access period reverting to seven days after six months’ operation — however, any changes made to enterprise agreements under the regulations will continue in perpetuity. … ACTU Secretary, Sally McManus … [said] ‘…the effect of reducing this period to 24 hours leaves workers exposed to employers seeking to exploit the fear caused by the pandemic and to pressure workers into rushed agreements, locking out their access to advice’. … Changes made to enterprise agreements under the new regulations are permanent, accessible to all businesses and continue an identifiable pattern of weakening workers’ representations rights. As such, the new regulations — introduced without consultation — look to be less a necessary lifeline of flexibility and more like a wolf in COVID clothing.”

Per Capita’s Emma Dawson [$] sounds a warning about Universal Basic Income: “[T]here’s a reason that the UBI has been championed by heroes of conservative and neoliberal politics such as Charles Murray and Milton Friedman: it’s an effective tool by which to reduce the size of government and increase people’s reliance on the market. Handing out unconditional cash from taxpayer funds gives great grist to the argument that government should stop delivering essential services and expect people to buy them from private providers. … Persuading the government to raise taxes, or even print money, to distribute to working people means that, no matter how badly you pay them, they can still afford to buy your stuff. Essentially, the UBI is just another measure to funnel the products of our national economy into the hands of those who control the means of production. It exacerbates the concentration of capital amongst those at the very top of our economic system.” One great advantage of the UBI is that it attracts widespread support (a survey published this week found 71% of Europeans agree “that EU member states should pay all citizens a basic income, regardless of their employment status”) but that is partly because it is still a nebulous concept. If progressives want a UBI it must be carefully designed and implemented in conjunction with UBS.

Joshua Badge: “At first glance, the government response appears to protect renters, but landlords win at every step. State governments opted for a trickle-down approach, with New South Wales gifting landlords $440m in further tax breaks. Victoria followed suit with a $420m discount on land tax, setting aside a mere $80m for renters themselves. Even then, state government rent relief goes straight to landlords, making the whole scheme a scandalous transfer of public money to private investors. The states’ strategy has been to protect the interests of property owners and pray they pass on the benefits to tenants. … Ours is a society with more empty residences than homeless people. Wealthy households have never been more prosperous, while millions remain impoverished. The solutions are simple. If someone is homeless, give them a home. If they are hungry, then provide them with food. The discussion we should have is not whether we should do this, but how? We should increase welfare payments, ban no-cause evictions, invest in social housing and legislate stronger rights for renters. We could also establish rent controls, nationalise housing and push for a national housing guarantee.”

When big companies like Amazon engage in flagrant union-busting, they are usually disciplined enough to keep their true motivation hidden. But this week, Amazon vice president Tim Read quit over the company’s treatment of union organisers, and explained why in a blog post: “3,000 Amazon tech workers from around the world joined in the Global Climate Strike walkout… [Their] leaders were threatened with dismissal. … Fast-forward to the Covid-19 era. Stories surfaced of unrest in Amazon warehouses, workers raising alarms about being uninformed, unprotected, and frightened. Official statements claimed every possible safety precaution was being taken. Then a worker organizing for better safety conditions was fired, and brutally insensitive remarks appeared in leaked executive meeting notes where the focus was on defending Amazon ‘talking points’. … Warehouse workers reached out to AECJ for support. … [T]wo visible AECJ leaders, were fired on the spot… The justifications were laughable; it was clear to any reasonable observer that they were turfed for whistleblowing. … [R]emaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned.” Of course, they will simply replace Read with a more compliant corporate warrior — but it’s interesting when the mask slips.

Linguist Zachary Jaggers questions the use of the term ‘essential workers’: “By this point in the coronavirus pandemic, you’ve probably heard a lot about ‘essential workers.’ They’re the people working in hospitals and grocery stores, on farms and in plants. They’re keeping public transit, shipping and utilities running. But is ‘essential’ describing the workers themselves? Or only the work they do? Right now, many don’t feel like they’re being treated like they’re essential, and workers at Amazon, Walmart and other companies have organized strikes to protest unsafe working conditions. There seems to be a disconnect between how some low-wage workers are being described and what they’re experiencing on the ground. … It makes you wonder whether some of these workers are considered all that essential. Might ‘expendable’ be a more fitting term? … Other workers are questioning why their work is even being described as ‘essential.’ … They feel their work is really only ‘essential’ to their employers to ‘help them make money,’ as one Walgreens worker put it.” Consider Scott Morrison’s claim that “Everyone who has a job in this economy is an essential worker”, and remember, as he bullies the States into putting people at risk of a second wave of infection, that he cares about money first and people only as a means to keep the money moving,

Matt Korostoff has published a powerful infographic to illustrate the obscenity of wealth inequality: “Jeff [Bezos] is so wealthy, that it is quite literally unimaginable. We rarely see wealth inequality represented to scale. This is part of the reason Americans consistently under-estimatethe relative wealth of the super rich. Every 10 pixels you scroll is $5 million. OK, we’re coming up on the end now. Lol, just kidding, we’re about ⅓ of the way. Keep scrolling though, there’s more to see. … No single human needs or deserves this much wealth.” Reading about it doesn’t do it justice; you should click through to scroll (and scroll, and scroll) for yourself.

Guy Rundle [$]: “Now, as the possibility of, and pressure to have, a relaxation of such begins, there is the time to debate the principles, practices and priorities of continuing lockdowns. That needs to be done in parliament. So that the government has to make its best case for the changes it is proposing. So that opposition and crossbenches can hold the proposed policy to account, offer alternatives, speak up for those who have been excluded from JobKeeper and other measures, raise the interests of those who may be treated as expendable citizens in the move to reopening: the aged, the chronically ill and disabled, remote-area indigenous people and others. Governments in power have loved the de facto dictatorship of lockdown by regulation. … Unity derived from dictatorial fiat is no unity at all. Faced with second and third waves of this disease, we may have to do this all over again. That will be far more difficult to impose. Only with the legitimacy of unity after debate — an achieved and created unity, a shared responsibility — will we able to do what is necessary to avoid the disasters of the US and the UK. The place for this is parliament and the time is now.”

David Harvey: “[I]n the midst of this emergency, we are already experimenting with alternative systems of all sorts, from the free supply of basic foods to poor neighborhoods and groups, to free medical treatments, alternative access structures through the internet, and so on. In fact, the lineaments of a new socialist society are already being laid bare — which is probably why the right wing and the capitalist class are so anxious to get us back to the status quo ante. This is a moment of opportunity to think through what an alternative might look like. This is a moment in which the possibility of an alternative actually exists. Instead of just reacting in a knee-jerk manner and saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get those 26 million jobs back immediately,’ maybe we should look to expand some of the things that are already going on, such as the organization of collective provision. … This is not utopian. This is saying, all right, look at all those restaurants on the Upper West Side that have closed and are now sitting there, kind of dormant. Let’s get the people back in — they can start producing the food and feed the population on the streets and in the houses, and they can give it to the old people. We need that kind of collective action for all of us to become individually free.”