panel sinks labor claim on productivity

"Panel sinks Labor claim on productivity

FINALLY, an official body has exploded Julia Gillard's ridiculous claim that her labour market reregulation is promoting productivity rather than undermining it.

The Productivity Commission's retailing inquiry was sparked by the online shopping threat, but it has ended up blowing the whistle on the retailers' bigger problem -- the Prime Minister's efficiency-sapping Fair Work Act.

As the Productivity Commission notes, Gillard even gave her legislation a last-minute "exceptional circumstances" exemption from a regulation impact statement.

Like Stephen Conroy's National Broadband Network, she told her Fair Work system to take a sickie just as it was due to account for itself on efficiency or cost-benefit grounds.

That's because it would fail, despite Gillard's claim yesterday that productivity "informs every area of our reform".


Her Fair Work system is all about beating up John Howard's Work Choices. And it is about rewarding organised labour -- in this case the right-wing shoppies union that helped knock off

Kevin Rudd and is now showing Mike Rann the door in South Australia.

This has allowed Gillard's new system to trash one of our biggest-employing industries just as it is being hit by 24-hour GST-free online shopping and by the biggest jump in household saving in at least half a century.

Just as this demands increased flexibility and more incentive-based pay, FWA has jacked up the minimum wage floor, making it more costly to employ casuals and imposing higher penalty rates.

Its "award modernisation" has reinforced the low productivity of retailing. And it has made it unprofitable for some retailers to meet their customers' preferences to shop on weekends or in the evenings, even though some workers prefer such hours.

The "individual flexibility arrangement" award clauses that replace John Howard's individual workplace agreements are a joke. They can't be offered as a condition of employment, workers can cancel them with four weeks' notice and the unions are blocking them.

Labor talks about workplace flexibility, but as the commission notes, this is more about "family-friendly workplaces, rather than productivity".

FWA even tried to stop students working for a couple of hours after school at their local newsagent, an arrangement the Productivity Commission says has benefited "both employers and the students".

Forced to back off, FWA still maintains only "strict and limited" exceptions to its "prescriptive minimum hours" for casual work, which may disadvantage older jobseekers.

Retailers should bless the commission for scratching the surface on all this. The issue now is what to do about it.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/panel-sinks-labor-claim-on-productivity/story-fn59niix-1226108570160