Will workers have Moore's or less bargaining power?

The reality of the system the Howard Government intends foisting on most Australian workers, and which Des Moore says does not go far enough in its deregulation, is a “No Contract - No Start” system. This completely abrogates the Liberal Party’s traditional commitment to freedom of choice (pdf file 128KB) and Moore's apparent support of that principle.

Mitchell and Fetter (pdf file 312KB) provide an empirical case against the power equity myth in their analysis of the substantive content of Australian Workplace Agreements that Des Moore would want to be further deregulated. In their study of 500 AWAs, they found there was overall an emphasis on cost reduction rather than productivity enhancement. This would suggest that employers were having their own way rather than there being a balanced give-and-take in the process of negotiation:

… the Act pays lip service to the idea that an AWA is a result of negotiation: it provides for the parties to appoint “bargaining agents” and to take protected industrial action in the course of negotiations. However, the Act anticipates that more commonly the employer will draft the AWA and present it to the employee on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The employer is required to give the employee a copy of the AWA together with an information statement prepared by the EA and must explain the effect of the AWA to the other party. There is a minimum cooling off period (five days for existing employees; fourteen days for new employees) before signing. The only recognition of the imbalance of bargaining power is found in the legislative prohibitions against duress, misleading information, threats and intimidation.

The answer to the question at the head of this piece is that Des Moore's utopian vision of a power balance between individualised employees - especially those on poverty wages and without job security - and employers propagates, through endless iteration, a myth about the employment relationship. That myth is self-serving for managerial fundamentalists and their acolytes.

For most Australian workers it is a doubly cruel myth as John Howard slashes away at worker protection by further undermining the Commission’s role.