Labor scheme to sell out workers to unions

By Janet Albrechtsen

As always, the most prescient observations about Labor come from within Labor. When the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard leadership ticket won the day back in December last year, one Labor insider said they looked like "the spider and the fly". He added: "The spider was a red-back," alluding to Gillard's scarlet locks.



Last week, when Rudd admitted he was not across the detail of Labor's industrial relations policy, a policy that puts unions back in charge of the workplace, he basically confessed he had been caught in Gillard's union web. And his problem is our problem.

Under Labor, workers will be caught in the same web, conscripted to the union cause. If you are a worker, you can expect to be paying bargaining fees to unions with a nice moiety flowing through to the Labor Party.

Labor is playing funny games. Contrary to Rudd and Gillard endorsing bargaining fees in the past three days, Gillard backflipped late yesterday, denying they would be allowed. Let's wait to see that in Labor's IR policy before we get too comfortable.

This aspect of Labor's IR package has gone largely unnoticed. As I wrote in Inquirer on the weekend, unions wanted it that way and are furious their secret agenda has been exposed. Equally disturbing, the Howard Government has done a poor job in unmasking this union scam, which promises to radically reshape the Australian workplace.

If Rudd is right that IR will determine the next election, the full ramifications of bargaining fees deserve greater attention. So here's a recap. First, Labor's IR policy statement, Forward with Fairness, says: "Collective agreements will be at the heart of Labor's industrial relations system." It says a collective agreement will rule a workplace when agreed on by a majority of workers who turn up to vote. That means in a workplace of 1000 workers, if 100 workers turn up to vote and 51 workers vote yes to a collective agreement, that agreement prevails. The vote of 51 workers will bind all 1000 workers.

Second, and this is not in Labor's policy statement, the unions plan to charge all 1000 workers a bargaining fee. This will deliver truckloads of cash to the unions when they are financially strapped and suffering from record low membership. Even better, the plan will also boost union membership because unions will set a bargaining fee at a level higher than membership fees. Understandably, workers will be tempted to join a union rather than pay the higher bargaining fee. And as the ALP collects a percentage of union fees, each new member of an affiliated union means more money for Labor.

The figures are potentially staggering. Let's take two examples. According to Grace Collier, a former union official who is an industrial relations specialist in Brisbane, a union contact in Telstra told her yesterday that unions extract on average just more than $455 in fees from each of the 9880 (26 per cent) union members who make up Telstra's 38,000 workforce. So unions collect $4,497,041 from Telstra union members each year. Collier's union contact is predicting that, under a Rudd government, a higher bargaining fee for Telstra's 28,120 non-union members. Pegging it at $500 (he suggests it may be $800) will pull in an extra $14million for unions that negotiate collective bargaining agreements for Telstra workers. (At $800, it rises to more than $22million for those unions.)

Collier points to a smaller workplace, a private hospital in Brisbane she helped restructure. Of the 220 full-time nurses on a collective agreement, 30 are union members who each pay $416 in union fees, delivering the relevant nurses' union a total of $12,480 each year. Under Rudd's IR policy, if the remaining non-union members pay a bargaining fee of, let's say, $500, the union will collect an extra $95,000. Now repeat that in small workplaces across Australia. No wonder they wanted this issue under wraps until after the election.

With bargaining fees exposed, Rudd was forced to respond on the weekend. He said if employers agreed to a compulsory bargaining fee being included in a collective agreement and agreed to collect it for unions, where was the unfairness?

Either Rudd does not get it or else he is treating us as dopes. The unfairness is that employers may well agree to tax workers. It's no skin off their nose and by agreeing to the union's biggest earner, bargaining fees, the employer may offer reduced benefits for workers. If the employer refuses, then, according to Collier, Fair Work Australia will be able to step in and impose bargaining fees in a collective agreement. The unfairness is that workers who did not vote on, and may not want or need, the collective agreement will be bound by its terms and be charged a fee for the privilege.

Unionists tell us it is all about dealing with the so-called freeloaders who receive a wage rise without contributing to unions who negotiate the collective agreement. In fact, workers across Australia secure wage rises without the help of unions or collective agreements. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 24 per cent of workers in the private sector are on registered collective agreements (only 15 per cent of those workers are union members) and 39 per cent of private sector workers are on individual contracts. In other words, Australian workers are able to secure wage rises for reasons other than union muscle. That will all change under a Labor government where the plan is to re-unionise the Australian workforce by stealth.

When Rudd revealed he was not across the detail of Labor's IR platform, it was a devastating admission from our alternative prime minister. Indeed, his efforts to pull the union movement into line have been laughable. During the weekend he warned unions that they "will survive or die based on their ability to compete". Compete? Rudd's IR policy hands unions a new monopoly to negotiate collective agreements and to charge all workers for their efforts.

It is becoming painfully clear that domestic policy has never been Rudd's focus. Indeed, in his first big interview with The Weekend Australian Magazine after becoming leader, he was asked by Christine Jackman to nominate his greatest strength as alternative prime minister. Rudd pointed to his knowledge of China gleaned from his diplomat posting and travelling there "probably more than 50 times" since.

It's neat that Rudd is across the China challenge and is no doubt chuffed to hear that a new biography is due to be translated into Mandarin. But while he was delivering speeches in Washington at the Brookings Institution last month on how China would "shape the history of the Pacific century", back home Gillard and the ACTU were putting the finishing touches on a plan that effectively introduces compulsory unionism.

From Gillard's perspective, it makes perfect sense. As one Labor frontbencher told The Sydney Morning Herald, she wants to be the "darling of the union movement". Whether Rudd wins or loses the election, this is the power base she will ultimately draw on to swallow up the fly. The only question is when.

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Labor Party still wedded to insulting relic of affirmative action

It's good to see that under his crisp white shirt, Kevin Rudd is flexing his muscle to install good quality Labor candidates such as Greg Combet into seats for the upcoming election. But overshadowing his efforts is the ALP relic of affirmative action - a policy that works against candidates being chosen on merit, instead allowing chromosomes to call the shots.

Warren Mundine decided not to contest the lower house seat of Fowler at the next election - a move that would have meant unseating Labor MP Julia Irwin - citing his full support for affirmative action. Mundine is a quality candidate - articulate, smart and his proposals to end the cycle of poverty and violence suffered by indigenous people are nothing short of inspirational. He is, quite simply, the best person for the job. Yet he has sidelined himself because of a silly, out-dated policy that remains a Labor Party article of faith. We now know that Irwin will remain in her job because she is a woman. It's hard to imagine a more demeaning reason for scoring and keeping a seat in Parliament than one that relies on you missing out on the Y chromosome when sperm and egg meet in the womb.

And Rudd appears to be adding salt to the wound, pursuing more affirmative action silliness by installing women into seats who clearly should not be there. Enter Nicole Cornes - the Adelaide gossip columnist who gives blondes a bad name. Last week Rudd unveiled the pretty wife of former footie great, Graham Cornes, as the new Labor candidate for the South Australian seat of Boothby.

As an AFL tragic during my teens, I grew up thinking Cornsey was a legend, one of the all time great sportsmen. Now his wife, trading on the Cornes hero-worship in SA - and the fact she is female - is to stand for Parliament. Never mind that she admitted to the media she knows next to nothing about ALP policies, voted for John Howard in the past and declined a media interview because "quite frankly, I'm not prepared for anything heavy." After reading a newspaper splash about her press conference announcing her candidacy (when she looked like a stunned rabbit) she articulated some words of wisdom for the punters, telling us "first thing in the morning when you wake up, you think, oh God, I should have had my eyebrows waxed".

Ah, the joys of being female. In the ALP, no matter how much you neglect your eyebrows and no matter how shallow your knowledge of Labor policies, you can get a guernsey so long as the XX chromosomes are in place. Which is why affirmative action is so misguided and condescending to the very people it pretends to champion - intelligent women who can and should be making a contribution to politics. At a time when smart girls are pouring out of university, women who are happy to free-ride on the back of outdated affirmative action policies, and men who advocate such policies, are doing women no favours. It is no feather in the female cap if affirmative action explains your elevation to a job. Nicole Cornes is a neat example that merit matters.

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NSW government hospitals cannot accomodate twin birth



A PREGNANT mother has been shunted between three hospitals up to 200km from her Sydney home because doctors can't find enough neo-natal beds for her premature twins. NSW Health was last night desperately searching for two specialised cots – which cost $1 million each – in Sydney to house April Mackey ahead of the impending arrival of her twins. The mother-of-three is 29 weeks pregnant and has spent the past two days at John Hunter Hospital, in Newcastle, despite living at Badgery's Creek in western Sydney. Doctors have been unable to find two neo-natal intensive beds at a Sydney hospital, despite 124 being in use across the state.

Mrs Mackey told The Daily Telegraph last night she was not sure if she could have her babies, due any day, at the hospital, which did have two available neo-natal cots. "They are telling me the beds are no longer available so I have no idea where I will be sent to next," Mrs Mackey said. "This is supposed to be a joyous occasion and yet I am stressed out worrying about where I am going to be. I've got no one here with me because all of my family is in Sydney."

Mrs Mackey, 32, went into labour last week when the water around one of her twins broke. When she visited Nepean Hospital she was told there were no beds and she was sent to Royal Women's Hospital at Randwick. From there she was transported by ambulance to Newcastle but during the journey she was transferred from one ambulance to another. Her husband Colin has had to remain in Sydney to care for their three other children. "I just want to get back to Sydney to be there for my children," she said.

Health Minister Reba Meagher said it was impossible to have the intensive care cots at every hospital. "It is not possible to have these very intensive cots at every hospital because of the cost and the care involved," she said. "There has been some communication breakdown with the family. I've asked NSW Health to address that promptly and I've asked appropriate accommodation be found for her and her family." Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said it was a sad indictment on the health system.

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Wrinkle cream rip-off

WOMEN paying up to $175 for anti-wrinkle creams are being ripped off by false and misleading advertising by cosmetic giants, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. The makers of Lancome, Clinique, Estee Lauder, L'Oreal and Payot have all been ordered to withdraw advertisements in the past year after complaints to Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The TGA's complaints panel found while the creams, peels and serums were only cosmetics, they were making claims that were therapeutic, or which would make a physiological difference. In one case, Estee Lauder argued that because they were known as a cosmetics firm and their product Perfectionist Correcting Serum was being advertised in a fashion magazine "readers could not reasonably expect the product to have a therapeutic use". They told the TGA the product used optical technology among other things to blur the effect of wrinkles. This was despite promising in their advertisement their $160 product could fill in and smooth out expression lines instantly and "helps the skin amplify its natural collagen production".

The complaints panel said it was unable to accept the claim was merely cosmetic and had "no doubt" it was a therapeutic claim. In another complaint, the panel said it was concerned about the comparison Payot made between its $175 Payot Rides Relax to injections of the wrinkle-relieving toxin Botox. The panel ordered Payot to withdraw its claims that the serum was "wrinkle correcting".

The Australian Consumers Association would like to see the TGA having the power to fine the cosmetics industry instead of merely ordering them to withdraw their ads. ACA health policy officer Viola Korczak said the companies were continually trying to push the boundaries when making claims about their products. "It is in the companies' interests to put out an ad with a misleading claim because if someone does lodge a complaint, by the time it is processed, the ad could have run for weeks or months," said Ms Korczak. "There is little incentive for them to follow the rules."

She said a breach of the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code was no more than a slap on the wrist. The ACA has a member on the complaints committee, along with representatives of doctors, pharmacists and alternative health care professionals. Ms Korczak said the committee was under-resourced, had a backlog of complaints and did not monitor advertisements itself but relied on complaints. However, in what is a multi-million dollar dirty tricks war, most complaints are made by rival companies and few by genuine consumers. Unless the product is registered as therapeutic, cosmetic companies can only use terms relating to the appearance or look of the skin, hair or nails.

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