Just thought a few of you might appreciate an insight into the ambience of today's Australian 'industrial relations' (which is to 'class war' as 'make love' is to 'fuck'). This from today's *The Australian*:
Rio Tinto decision hailed by Howard By IAN HENDERSON and CHRISTOPHER NIESCHE 9oct99
RIO Tinto's historic victory over the union movement in the Australian Industrial Relations Commission this week showed how far the Federal Government had reformed workplace relations, John Howard declared yesterday.
But the commission's decision prompted warnings from academics and industrial lawyers about the future of Australian industrial relations and triggered a sharp clash between the ACTU and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
On Thursday, the commission sank a three-year industrial campaign by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union for higher wages for workers at the Hunter Valley No 1 open-cut coal mine, and backed the company's stance.
The commission stated in a judgment that "all is fair in love and war" and industrial disputes were no exception.
ACTU assistant secretary Greg Combet yesterday declared the decision signalled "a return to the law of the jungle", saying the Howard Government's workplace laws that had been applied by the Commission were now confirmed as anti-worker.
"The deck is well and truly stacked against ordinary workers struggling against the might of international companies like Rio Tinto," Mr Combet said.
But Mark Paterson, chief executive of ACCI, the leading employers' representative, said the decision by the Commission was "yet another warning that mindless militancy will achieve nothing for employees".
Mr Paterson said the union "has to live with the results" of its failed choice "to use its industrial strength and clout rather than bargain in a meaningful and moderate fashion".
John Buchanan, acting director of the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training at the University of Sydney, said the decision "basically means any employer who has the resources to starve a workforce into submission will get what it wants".
The commission had traditionally been viewed as redressing the power imbalance between bosses and workers, but would no longer fulfil this role, he said.
The Prime Minister told a lunch in Port Moresby yesterday that the industrial reforms his Government had pushed successfully in 1996 had paved the way for the AIRC's decision.
The AIRC had "demonstrated just how far those reforms had gone", he added.
The commission effectively endorsed the workplace changes introduced unilaterally at the mine by Rio Tinto, and added that it was not prepared to grant to the union the claims it had failed to win in a protracted industrial war.