Tony Abbott's strategy for getting back into government was to make
himself a small target by adopting few controversial policies. He
mollified his big business backers by promising to hold many inquiries
and take any proposals for controversial reform to the 2016 election.
But
once in government Abbott couldn't avoid announcing many unpopular
measures to get the budget back on track. These have hit his standing in
the polls, while causing difficulty and delay in getting budget
measures through the Senate.
It's likely a lot of them won't pass,
implying the government will have to put a lot of effort into finding
more palatable savings. Even then, some of this year's unpopular
measures - particularly the age-pension changes - will have to be
defended at the election.
Meanwhile, most of a year has passed
without the government getting on with its promised inquiries into
controversial issues such as industrial relations, tax reform and
federal-state relations (think three letters: GST).
Not a lot of
time is left for the various inquiry processes to report, for the
government to consider the reports, decide what reforms it proposes and
then explain and justify them to voters before the election.
Does
Abbott's unexpected radicalism on budget measures presage equally
radical proposals in these other issues? If so, the next election
campaign will be a lot more exciting than the last one.
Or does
all the hostility he has aroused just with his budget measures make it
more likely Abbott won't want to bite off a lot more trouble on other
fronts?
On the question of industrial relations reform, Abbott and
his minister, Eric Abetz - not to mention the Productivity Commission,
which will be conducting the inquiry - would do well to ponder a recent
speech by Geoff McGill, a long-experienced industrial practitioner and
now a visiting scholar at Sydney University's Workplace Relations
Centre.
McGill observes that the history of federal industrial
relations legislation "has been punctuated by swings in the IR pendulum
across the political cycle". First the Howard government's Work Choices
swung the pendulum in favour of employers, then the Labor government's
Fair Work swung it back towards the unions.
Now big business and
its cheer squad in the national dailies want the restored Coalition
government to give the IR pendulum another shove back in the direction
to the employers. Isn't this the way the political game is played?
It
is. But McGill questions whether continuing to play that way is the
best way to get where we want to go. The advocates of yet another round
of industrial relations "reform" justified it mainly by arguing the need
for faster improvement in the productivity of labour.
That's something
all sides can agree is a desirable objective. But McGill shoots down
some wishful thinking on the topic. "Productivity growth is a complex
process and usually described in simplistic terms," he says. "It can
never be assumed and is only evident after the event.
"There is
little evidence to support claims that particular changes in industrial
relations legislation will boost national labour productivity."
It's
the substance of the employment relationship, not its legal form, which
determines whether people are engaged and productive, he says.
Productive workplaces are not the outcome of legislation, but of the
quality of leadership and culture at the workplace.
Surely there must be a law against someone speaking such obvious sense.
McGill
brings to mind another point. Much of the thinking behind "the end of
entitlement" and the unpopular budget measures is about saying
governments can't solve all your problems for you (just the opposite of
the message all politicians spread during election campaigns). It's not
possible and, in any case, it's not healthy for people to be so
dependent on the authorities.
True enough. But if that's what the
government is telling everyone from the young unemployed to uni students
to age pensioners, why is it allowing big business to imagine its
industrial relations problems should - or even could - be solved by the
government changing the law?
Actually, my guess is most of
business isn't silly enough to think that. The push is probably coming
from lobbyists trying to justify their fee, journos trying to sell
newspapers and a relative handful of belligerent employers facing
equally belligerent unions and hoping the government will give them some
new stick to beat over the heads of their opponents.
Another
point of McGill's: if we want better industrial relations leading to
greater productivity improvement and the main way for employers to bring
this about lies in the workplace, maybe a better way to encourage them
to focus on the domestic challenge is to give them a period of
legislative stability rather than more changes in the rules of the game.
Most
successful managers understand that getting along with people - winning
their regard, respect, support, trust, loyalty and co-operation - works
better than getting heavy and legalistic. That's how you get better
industrial relations - by, as McGill says, putting more emphasis on the
relations and less on the industrial.
Managers like to be kept in
the loop. Guess what? So do workers. Smart managers keep their staff
well informed about the company's performance and the challenges it
faces, and give early warnings - even to the union - about any need for
nasties like redundancies. They never risk a breakdown in relations by
telling workers things they subsequently discover to be untrue.
You
engender co-operation by treating people well, consulting them, giving
them a degree of autonomy, rewarding loyalty and sharing the business's
proceeds fairly between shareholders, managers and staff. Workers accept
a hierarchical pay structure, but you don't cause envy and disaffection
by rewarding some equals more than others.
And if you don't like
outside union officials coming into your workplace, you keep your
workers so happy they never need to call them in.
