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there is no luck involved, just good or bad management.

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Crowds cheer as workplaces chained
Blog
Andrew Bolt
Saturday, November 29, 2008 at 08:23am


Paul Kelly protests:

KEVIN Rudd shouts from the rooftops each day that the global financial crisis has changed the world, but the Prime Minister does not believe his own words.

A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd Government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.

Normally this would defy any test of common sense. Indeed, it would seem the essence of irresponsibility. But it has instead won widespread applause, and its architect Julia Gillard has won almost universal acclaim as a political hero.

Kelly lists the ways the new IR laws will hurt:

First, the new commission, called Fair Work Australia, is more powerful and influential than the former Australian Industrial Relations Commission…

Second, the effect is to empower unions in enterprise agreements and severely limit genuine non-union agreements. A union needs only one member in a workplace to become a bargaining party…

Third, the new right-of-entry provisions for unions are extraordinary and unacceptable in a democracy… Unions will have right of entry to premises where they have no members, and they will be able to inspect the records of individuals who are non-members where this relates to a suspected contravention...


Fourth, the bargaining process is rewritten to favour unions and to allow FWA to intervene more liberally. This is via the beautiful euphemism of “good faith bargaining” that must apply universally…

Fifth, an entirely new bargaining system is created for low-paid workers, who are entitled to negotiate across an industry with multiple employers… The bill does not allow industrial action across an industry but, critically, it does allow industry-wide arbitration…

Sixth, businesses will be more exposed to union demarcation disputes… Provided a union has a member in the workplace, the union can apply to be covered by the agreement…

Seventh, as is well-known, Labor’s aim is a workplace system devoid of individual statutory contracts.


This will take at least a decade to wind back, and that’s presuming any party finds the will to even want to try. Many jobs in the meantime will be lost, and incomes will be suppressed. People will cheer.
UPDATE

Brad Norrington agrees - reregulation is back with a vengeance:

The detail of Labor’s Fair Work Bill shows that - despite professing to support a continuation of enterprise bargaining in which workplaces sort out their own affairs - Labor’s centralised tribunal will be the kingpin with remarkable powers… Gillard has reached back in time, further than Howard and Keating, by handing back to the old commission many of its lost powers.