Labor should welcome small business participation in its conferences and other structures, according to Federal Workplace Relations Shadow Minister Robert McClelland.

McClelland says he supports the proposal recently floated by fellow Federal ALP frontbencher Mark Latham. “In this day and age you’ve got small businesses that include what would otherwise be trade occupations – bricklayers, plumbers, electricians compelled in many instances to go into these individual contracts because its only way they are going to get work. They’re certainly in our demographics, and they would be interested in proper health care, proper education, opportunities for their kids. I think Mark’s got a valid point there.”

Broader base
Small business participation in the ALP is just one of a number of potentially contentious reform proposals that McClelland has supported since taking over as Labor’s Workplace Relations spokesman and Shadow Attorney-General after the November 2001 federal election. McClelland’s boldness is fuelled by a conviction of Labor’s diminishing relevance to a conservative electorate, attracted to the Howard Government’s stand on border protection and more concerned about law and order than the environment or industrial relations. “I think the challenge for the labour movement is to broaden our base. I go down to branch meetings with very committed people but they tend to be people with a narrow focus of views. I’m not sure we are getting through our policy development process a broad range of views that reflect the Australian population.”

“Australians these days don’t see the world through the rhetoric of class struggle. They are seeing that the average home in Sydney now, in my area on the highway under the flight path, a block of land is $340,000. I mean they are seeing themselves as quite well off, and indeed aspiring to be well off, if only they can pay the bank so they keep a roof over their head. Now their aspirations are for their personal success and their family’s success and, I think, the nation’s success.”

McClelland believes that the union movement’s poor coverage of private sector employees – less than 20% - has disengaged at least some union leaders from the aspirations of the broader electorate. “Trade unionists have a challenge to articulate building the cake, not simply dividing the cake. In worse case scenarios trade unionists appeal to the limited membership they have by saying ‘all bosses are bastards’. I can’t overstate that, but clearly there is a limited group who would pursue that language.”

Individual contracts
Pitching to middle Australia involves nudging Labor’s industrial relations policy towards the middle. McClelland distances himself from media reports that he supports a backdown on Labor’s policy to scrape individual contracts - Australian Workplace Agreements - but its clear that he wants less of a focus on “the mode of regulation” and more on “outcomes”. “Basically what I’m trying to do is to establish some general principles that people of fair mind will agree on from both sides of the [employer-union] equation. Why doesn’t everyone have a look at the outcome they want to achieve and that is workplace recognition of individual skills, training and so forth.”

McClelland is no fan of AWAs. On one hand the Howard Government is bringing in legislation to prevent industry-wide or pattern bargaining, but “that’s precisely what AWAs are from the employers side of things - it’s a pattern that they offer, a template agreement that they offer to all workers. If the worker says, ‘no, I’m not happy with that’ the employers say ‘well, that’s OK, move along, we’ll see you later - the next bloke’s coming in the door now’.”

Workplace Democracy
McClelland would prefer a more “collaborative” approach to workplace relations, built around a workplace democracy model – although he’s not sure which model might best suit Australian conditions. “Germany of course has works councils. I just don’t think they would fit into the Australian culture - I think there could be a variety of approaches, whether its a team approach and the individual teams elect who participated in management, or whether its something like Kellogs has had for a long while now, where the various unions select representative that participates in the workplace forum.”

“Would the One Tel collapse have occurred if there had been effective workplace democracy happening there, if workers had of been informed of the financial affairs of the company, what the potential markets were, or how they were travelling - paying off their debts and so forth? I think it would prevent those secret bombshells hitting our economy.”

McClelland acknowledges that enterprise bargaining, introduced and extended to non-union enterprise bargaining by the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments, has often failed to deliver workplace democracy or fair bargaining outcomes – a trend accelerated under the Howard Government. McClelland sees a revived role for a more interventionist Australian Industrial Relations Commission. “One of the real mistakes made by the government is that they removed those provisions to compel all parties to negotiate in good faith. Currently there are very ad hoc powers the commission can exercise, by terminating a bargaining period for instance, if they are of the opinion a party isn’t genuine in attempting to come to an agreement, but they don’t have the ability to get in there and get amongst it to actually guide or facilitate the negotiation process.”

Labor will oppose Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott’s unfair dismissal legislation in the Senate, believing that there is no justification for new legislation to make it easier to sack workers. However McClelland believes that small business has a legitimate complaint about the complexity of Australian unfair dismissal law. “What a lot of businesses have said to us is what’s driving them crazy is the fact that we have seven different systems in respect of unfair dismissal. So you’ve got for example workers in the manufacturing sector clerks under the state award entitled to one set of rights manufacturing workers – metal workers under a federal award entitled to another set of rights. You’re more likely to get uniformity between the states agreeing to fundamental principles if they were based on the concept of a fair go all round.”

National uniformity
McClelland is a supporter of a unitary system of industrial relations. “I don’t think you’re ever going to achieve it by way of federal legislation overriding the states, but if we are going to be a national exporting economy, as we must be to sustain our standard of living, then you can’t have such fragmentation across your seven systems. I think all parties have to sit down and work together for uniformity. There is already the ability across appointments to the respective state and federal tribunals – that’s a start along the way. But if we had the laws based on fundamentally accepted principles such as a common theme of obligation of negotiating in good faith, or such as a collective bargaining outcome underpinning individual arrangements, you are more likely to get the states to agree to implement a universal standard across the nation.”

Time to listen to Workers and Unions
Chris Wright responds to the views expressed in this article