Workplace woes

Julia Gillard has had a pretty mixed week. She might have landed a few telling blows on Tony Abbott this week over his pronouncements on virginity, but she’s copped a caning over the whole My Schools website and she’s hardly shone in the eyes of the business community.

It’s still very early days for Gillard’s new Fair Work industrial relations regime, but the signs are hardly great. In fact, the on-going strike at a Western Australian LNG project being developed by energy giant Woodside is a particularly bad look.

Around 2,500 workers are striking over accommodation issues; they want to be put up in motels when they are on the job (as they have been in the past) while the company wants to be able to shift them in temporary workers huts, which are affectionately known as dongas.

The workers have been on strike most of the week and have vowed not to return until Saturday. That’s despite Gillard’s new IR umpire, Fair Work Australia, ordering them back to work on Monday.

As Woodside very reasonably asked, what’s the point of having an IR umpire at all if their orders are going to be wilfully disobeyed?

Gillard made a show of ordering the workers back on the job, but has refused to formerly intervene in the dispute – and given that government intervention is supposed to be limited to issues of national importance, it’s not exactly clear what she could do anyway.

Today we’ve got the Business Council of Australia launching a report which points out that no one really understands the new good faith bargaining laws, and calling on the Government to release a code of practise to help employers get on top of their rights and obligations.

As I said, it’s early days and a new IR regime will always involve teething problems. The unions were always going to test the boundaries early on, and that’s exactly what they are doing.

The problem is, as the Western Australian situation shows, it’s not clear whether they can actually be reined in. The fact that Fair Work Australia is seemingly unable to prevent wildcat strikes involving so many workers on such a huge project is very worrying.

It’s also starting to feel like Gillard and the Government have rushed these changes through. Small and big business have complained about a lack of information about many aspects of the new laws and it should also be noted that the process of finalising the new Modern Awards system is still going.

If the number of strikes keep going and it becomes clear the Government has no way of stopping them, Gillard is in for more and more rough weeks.