Young pay penalty of union demands
If your son or daughter can't find an entry-level job in the restaurant or tourism industry as the school year comes to an end, you can blame the dinosaurs in the trade union movement, Labor's Fair Work commissioner Anne Gooley and Big Business.
Nothing chokes new employment in these areas more than Gooley's decision to ignore calls to alter the current job-destroying penalty rate regime and reject the argument for reduced employment costs and more jobs.
With pay loadings for weekend work and public holidays now reaching 250 per cent, it is not economically feasible for many employers to keep their businesses open when demand should logically be highest.
Under the past six wasted years of Labor governments, growth in the tourism sector has been choked. The existing award rate of $34 an hour for wait staff working Sundays effectively kills such jobs.
As Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Peter Anderson said, the decision "is extremely disappointing". "It's out of touch, it reflects the entrenched attitudes in the nation's industrial tribunals to the changed conditions in the nation's service industries," he said. "It shows a deafness to the realities of modern employment and ignores those who want to work.
"It displays a 'we know better' than either the staff or the employers, and reveals antiquated industrial attitudes."
Unfortunately, the representatives of Australian business, apart from ACCI, were almost unanimous in their support for Labor until the outcome of the September election became a foregone conclusion and industrial relations was placed on the Coalition's backburner.
Heather Ridout, the former head of the Australian Industry Group, was such a Rudd favourite that he appointed her to positions on four key panels including a seat on the Reserve Bank board and the now redundant Climate Change Authority. Now big business wants Prime Minister Tony Abbott to act on industrial relations and take the steps it was too gutless to even whisper when the Coalition was in the wilderness.
Unravelling Labor's union-driven agenda is a big task, but business has not helped itself.
It is not that long ago that the head of one of the Big Four banks held a Chatham House rules conference at the National Press Club and bagged the Coalition's policies - that banker, who was advised by a former Labor staffer, is now noisily asking favours of the Abbott government.
Abbott made it clear before the election he wasn't going to tackle changes to Labor's Fair Work Act - largely because the business sector was not clamouring for change and was certainly not prepared to openly express its opposition to Labor's agenda.
Now business leaders are warning it would be "madness" for the Coalition to delay industrial relations reform and urging Abbott to "get on and do some things" to stimulate the economy as anxiety grows about the ability of the resources boom to maintain its pace.
"We have gone from a banana republic-type analogy to a more southern European type analogy," Malcolm Broomhead, of transport giant Asciano, said on Thursday.
"We now have an inflexible workforce, a high-cost workforce, an ageing population and a welfare mentality we just can't afford."
All true, but governments act when there is demonstrable political will in the community and big business has only now emerged from hiding after ignoring the realities of Labor's crippling policies. The Fair Work decision is just one reminder of the cost of the failure of the business lobby to represent its membership in the face of union-friendly policies. The damage done by Labor and unions to struggling tourism in the area of coastal shipping is another.
A comparison of port costs for the potentially lucrative cruise sector was presented at a recent conference and it showed why Singapore ($11,660 for a 100-150 guest ship) would be favoured over Sydney ($52,700) or Brisbane ($52,960). Pilotage in Singapore ($800), Sydney ($3800). Berthing in Singapore ($2700), Sydney ($24,500) and Brisbane ($39,375).
The dead hand of the Maritime Union can be blamed for these restrictions on growth.
But shortsighted business figures and their willingness to cosy up to Labor for the last lost six years cannot be excused for their wilful complicity in the destruction of the job market. They may want change now, but they should have put some skin in the game when it counted.
Labor and the unions have shown consistently they'd rather see businesses close than make it easier for workers to get jobs. Only now is the business lobby seeing how it damaged itself with its policy to appease Labor policy, and those seeking jobs will be the one paying the price for this folly.
Source: The Sunday Telegraph, 12 October 2013
