Multi-employer awards are an Australian phenomenon and so is the herculean task of modernising them.
As time goes by, and given the legalistic approach we take to these things, our award system starts to take on some of the characteristics of an archeological dig with layers of regulation piled on top of each other. Faced with this growing pile, governments routinely hit upon the idea of a thorough-going overhaul. Root and branch stuff.
Award modernisation (or simplification) is a highly desirable and worthwhile exercise. That’s why the Hawke Government had a go at it and why the Rudd Government is also having a go. But it’s not easy, as today’s angst ridden stories demonstrate.
As awards grow in number, and matters covered, the worse it is for business from an administrative perspective. The fewer awards the better. But fewer awards mean that more employers, and employees, are squeezed into a strait jacket of conditions and wage rates that might not be commercially viable in many circumstances. Simpler awards can mean less flexible awards, and that’s not good for business either.
But there’s no obvious or easy way out of the problem that awards pose for a modern, flexible, competitive economy. If there was, awards would not have to be modernised every decade or two. John Howard hoped that awards would just wither away and be replaced by a set of minimum conditions underpinning individual and enterprise bargaining. That solution was rejected as too ‘extreme’ by the Australian electorate. So we are back with trying to make ‘capitalist wage setting with Australian characteristics’ work as well as possible.
Awards may be a great way of protecting workers, but they do not fit easily into today’s world and its demands for some magical pudding of simple and flexible regulation. And award modernisation will be with us for as long as there are awards. In another 20 years, another ALP government will launch upon the task of making awards work.
