12:31 Jan 8th, 2012 | 8 notes

I feel like any sort of federal welfare payment, like the Family Tax Benefit (A and B), should come with the disclaimer,

‘You may only be eligible if you:

  • Have two photogenic young children, or
  • Live in a swing electorate in Western Sydney, or
  • Live in Queensland.’

Because my single parent family on a teacher’s salary isn’t eligible for anything, while this charming family (in Western Sydney) earning a combined $142,000 a year is complaining that their hand-outs aren’t being inflation-linked for the next 4 years.

BOO HOO YOU GUYS.

Gosh.

Teachers, Nurses And Police Officers: The New Public Enemy?

10:32 Jun 5th, 2011 | 15 notes

Barry O’Farrell’s latest pice of industrial relations legislation has far reaching consequences not only for public employees, but for the future of the public service in New South Wales and for the state economy.

It has been described by 7.30 as ‘One of the country’s biggest Industrial Relations experiments’, taking control over public sector pay away from the NSW Industrial Relations Commission and giving it to the NSW parliament. The Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 will have the effect of politicizing and dramatically reducing the pay of the 400,000 public workers in NSW into the future, with unforeseen results.

Premier Barry O’Farrell touts that the legislation removes a $900 million bill from the tax-payer’s pocket and that the new policy guarantees a 2.5% annual pay rise to public workers, however both numbers appear to have been pulled from thin air. The text of the bill states no such wage increase obligation, and claims of a ‘financial mess’ by Mr O’Farrell as a reason for such measures have been refuted by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, that last month praised NSW for its ‘strong budgetary position and sound operating position’. Under the new legislation, all pay rises or variation of award schemes for public employees granted by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission are superseded by government policy, removing the power of the IRC to makes wage changes above whatever the sitting government legislates (Section 146C). Thus, the 2.5% pay rise is purely at the direction of the O’Farrell government and can be changed at will—now and into the future. The government has also stipulated that any increase above 2.5% would need to be balanced by ‘employee-related savings’, which amounts to benefits such as holiday pay and family leave being given up in return for a pay rise.

Unions NSW describe the legislation as ‘worse than WorkChoices’, ‘unprecedented’ and as handing NSW the crown for having the ‘Worst workplace rights in the country’. To understand the impact the state government’s changes will have, the Sydney University Workplace Research Center modeled O’Farrell’s 2.5% annual rise as if it had been in place since 2000. They found that a top-tier public high school teacher’s salary would be $14,580 lower (ranking them the lowest paid in the nation by $8,658), a Senior Constables salaries would be $8,961 a year lower (ranking them the lowest paid in the nation by $2,985), and registered nurses would individually be $12,232 worse off, again, ranking them the lowest paid in the nation, this time by $5,016. These numbers do not take into account overtime pay, which at the present time teachers are not entitled to.

O’Farrell had previously argued that NSW public sector employees were grossly remunerated, claiming their pay had outstripped private sector pay by ‘more than 10 percent’ since 1997. The Workplace Research Center’s report counters this, asserting that almost the entire wage gap he refers to is ‘explained by differences in qualifications, experience and occupation between the sectors.’

If this legislation had been enacted eleven years ago, by now the NSW public service would have been the most unattractive in the country, leading many to avoid seeking employment in it, opting for work in the private sector or in other states. Talented staff would have been all but drained from the system, and the state would be having trouble employing new staff of a similar calibre. It must be noted that these numbers and consequences do not represent a mystical, far-off alternate reality, but now represent the future of public employment in the largest state in the country. Without adequate salaries encouraging the best people into the state’s schools, we leave the future of our prosperity to chance. It is clear, especially for NSW, that a highly educated workforce is what Australia needs ‘If it is to compete in anything other that iron ore’, according to The Economist. For this to occur the education system requires a vertical strategy encompassing all levels education, not just the country’s universities. Such a strategy must inevitably include the best high school teachers possible. The influential newspaper also notes that Australia’s health care system ‘requires attention’, leading to the question of why retaining the best possible public nurses is not part of a reform agenda.

It is also interesting to examine this decision from a direct economic perspective. O’Farrell’s legislation will have the effect of limiting the real wage increases of one in eighteen people in the state to a level below the current 3.3% CPI inflation rate. At a time when consumer confidence has ‘plummeted’ to its lowest level since June 2009, when retail growth is at a puny 1.1% (seasonally adjusted) in the quarter up to April this year, and when ‘cost of living pressures’ is hot button media focus, cutting pay in such a drastic way is going to remove thousands of dollars from the pockets of 400,000 people, and will by strip cumulative millions from the NSW economy. Lacking substantial mineral wealth, NSW relies on retail and other service industries (the Australian Bureau of Statistics classifying ‘financial and insurance services’ as the fastest growing sector in the NSW economy in 2010) as a source of economic growth. Reducing the wages of 13% of the NSW labor force (calculated using 2006 census data) can only result in a negative economic impact if not offset by other parts of the state economy—now the second slowest in the nation.

The Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 was moved through parliament using standing rule 99 in order to gag debate and force the legislation to a vote. The rule was last used 105 years ago. It is clear that the O’Farrell government seeks to rewind union rights back to where they were before NSW and Australia valued and supported their public service. The silver lining is that the Labor Party has been handed an election winning issue by the Liberal government. It remains to be seen if the ALP can pick it up and run with it, and if they can stay united with their traditional allies long enough to reach the 2015 election.