Bad old days

The timing of the two-day strike at Australia Post and the fresh industrial action at Qantas is not really surprising – unions have always seen the busy Christmas period as a great time to flex their muscles.

However in this, the first Christmas under the Rudd Government’s new Fair Work industrial relations system, the disruptive industrial action is yet another sign that 2010 could be a very rocky year on the IR front.

Make no mistake – the pendulum has swung back firmly in favour of employees and unions under Labor, although employer groups are only really starting to discover how far.

Remember, the new laws are only six months old and we just haven’t seen enough of the potential trouble spots tested by Fair Work Australia. Indeed, not even all the new rules are in place yet – the new National Employment Standard and Modern Awards don’t come into force until January 1, 2010. When you are all on holidays, of course.

So it might not be until the middle of next year that we have a good sense of how all this is working. But the increasing level of strikes and industrial action and the rise in tension between unions and employers suggests that there is some bad news for bosses ahead.

This was underlined by Julia Gillard’s Fair Work Commissioner appointments earlier this week. Five of the six appointments have union backgrounds and workplace lawyers – a fact that has simply stunned workplace lawyers.

The changes in the IR world are not surprising, given the pendulum swung heavily in favour of employers under Howard (too far, Opposition leader Tony Abbott has conceded).

But let’s just hope that we’re not heading back to the bad old days – right now, the signs are more than a little worrying.