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WorkChoicesWorld … where every worker receives a prize

May 19, 2007 on 12:25 pm | In Uncategorized |

Are you confused by public discussion of WorkChoices? Do you have trouble relating the employers and union bosses who inhabit Joe Hockey’s world to the ones you see in your own workplace? Do blog commenters who enthusiastically endorse WorkChoices seem to be employed in an alternative universe where employers behave like no employers you have ever known?

Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your perception of the world of work. It’s the supporters of WorkChoices who have parted company with reality. Let’s look at some of the myths they peddle to support their distorted view of employment relations.

Employers run the business

Most pro-WorkChoices rhetoric talks about an ‘employer’ to mean ‘the owner of the business’. The rhetoric fails at the most basic level because it pretends that relationships at work are between an ‘employer’ and its employees. In truth, the majority of relationships are between employees and their managers or supervisors. Once this is understood, it becomes obvious that most of the inductive logic supporting WorkChoices is flawed.

In very small businesses, the owner may indeed be the manager but once an organisation has more than about 20 employees, an increasing number of them report to a supervisor or manager who is not the owner of the business. Millions of people are employed by large organisations owned by anonymous shareholders where the owners play no role at all in employee relations. Moreover, about 25% of Australian workers are employed in the public sector or by not-for-profit organisations of various kinds where there is no conventional ‘owner’ at all.

Let’s see how many assumptions collapse once it’s understood that many organisations aren’t businesses trying to out-perform other businesses, nor are they being run by their owners. But first, let’s get one other urban myth out of the way:

Managers faithfully represent the interests of owners

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Now you tell one.

(See also: Enron, HIH, AMP, NRMA, Qantas …)

Employers have consistent IR policies

Once it’s understood that organisations are run by professional managers not owners, it’s silly to talk about what ‘the employer’ does, as if it’s one single actor in the employment relationship. In fact, as anybody knows who’s worked in a large organisation, IR decisions reflect internal power and politics. That’s why you might see everyone getting generous pay rises one year and 10% retrenchments the next. It just means that the balance of power in the top management team shifted when they sacked the HR Manager and made the new one report to the Finance Director. The employment relations behaviour of organisations is the outcome of a process of negotiation amongst various power bases and is therefore fundamentally irrational. The WorkChoices assumption that organisations make consistent, sensible policies to serve a set of rational objectives just ignores everything we know about organisational behaviour.

Managers are good at their jobs.

Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.

There’s a reason why shows like The Office are not only hilarious but also make us uncomfortable … it’s because they are true to life. Around this great brown land, hundreds of thousands of men and women are exercising managerial authority for which they are either untrained or temperamentally unsuited, often both. They couldn’t act in the interests of the organisation even if they wanted to because they don’t know what those interests are or how to serve them. They don’t regard their subordinates as human assets for the organisation, they regard them as personal friends/enemies/potential sexual conquests/jokes/bastards/freaks/threats …anything but human beings to be coached with the aim of helping them do the best job they can for their organisation. Anybody who doubts this has never worked in a big enterprise.

Employers are interested in the performance of workers

This is the most persistent myth of all. “No employer would risk losing good workers,” goes the pro-WorkChoices propaganda, “Workers are too hard to replace. High turnover is a road to business failure.”

This is a wonderful example of something that appears to be so self-evidently true that most people don’t even try to rebut it. However, it’s far from true in many enterprises.

First of all, as noted above, about a quarter of all workers are employed by organisations that are not subject to market competition. Therefore it doesn’t matter if workers perform poorly and keep quitting as soon as they get another job. As long as blame can’t be sheeted home for clear breaches of the law or organisational policy, managers can be as bloody-minded as they like … and frequently are.

Second of all, many private sector organisations have deskilled their jobs so they can be done by virtually anyone. Therefore if workers don’t like their jobs they can piss off and the company will hire someone else without missing a beat. One good example is your favourite fast food company, which has designed its work so it can be done by school kids on a few bucks an hour, with staff turnover of anything up to 200% per annum. A lot of retailing is the same – in fact most jobs are like this in the casual/part-time sector where 25% of us are employed.

Finally, it’s a myth that employers are all concerned with the long-term success of their businesses. Many couldn’t give a stuff whether the place will be thriving in 10 years’ time. Businesses are increasingly becoming tradeable assets as opposed to sources of income. Many owners and managers are obsessed with short-term performance with a view to boosting the share price so they can sell the bloody thing at a huge profit. These days when a new CEO takes over it’s virtually compulsory to sack five or 10% of the workforce, just to show the stock market that the place is in safe hands. Workers are just pawns in these corporate games.

*****

Needless to say there are organisations out there where the owners care about the long-term, they see employees as their biggest assets and they don’t need a bunch of rules and regulations to make sure they treat workers fairly. They’ve also hired competent managers who have the organisation’s interests at heart. I know of some enterprises like that. However, it’s either naïve or dishonest to pretend that all employers meet that description. Many don’t.

Millions of Australians work in places where the owners are only interested in making a quick buck, or top management is on a little self-serving jaunt of its own, or many supervisors are incompetent; in many workplaces all three apply. Yet such workplaces barely register in the pro-WorkChoices rhetoric. If their existence is acknowledged at all, they are dismissed as an insignificant minority which will quickly go broke. The reality of course is very different. They are anything but insignificant and many of them survive and prosper because labour is sometimes not, in fact, an organisation’s most important asset.

That leaves unanswered the WorkChoices’R’Us crowd’s final argument: if workers don’t like their jobs they can just quit and get another one, so what’s the problem? This requires the demolition of a second category of urban myths about employment relations, which I’ll leave for a second instalment, coming to you soon!

(Cross-posted at Road to Surfdom.)