Work changes unfair? Bah, humbug!
Mebourne Age October 16 2005
The life of the newspaper opinionster is not all beer and skittles.
From time to time duty forces us to undertake distasteful tasks. But we must grit our teeth and do those things that readers cannot or will not do for themselves.
For example, to read every single word of "WorkChoices: One simpler, national workplace relations system for Australia". We have suffered, but one hopes not in vain.
The Spouse refuses to read these three big pages for herself but she demands an exegesis.
"Well, my precious, it seems that nothing is going to change."
She thinks I'm mad. How can there be such a hullabaloo if nothing is going to change.
"It's like this, dear heart. Everything you hold dear in the old Deakinite industrial relations scheme of things will stay the same. Look here - there are six red stamps saying 'Protected by law'. The only thing that is changing is that we are going to be much happier and richer."
"Bah," she says. And also "humbug!"
"But look, my love. See the picture of the happy pregnant lady on maternity leave. See the contented bloke in the singlet enjoying his flexible working arrangements which enable him to work 356 days a year, 24 hours a day, if that is what suits him best."
She is unimpressed by the promise of an Australian Fair Pay Commission and reckons that you only call something a fair pay commission if you have it in mind to screw the proletariat.
The Spouse is that singular anomaly, the "mum and dad investor" Bolshevik. There is no pleasing such people.
We have always wondered how poor old Engels managed to hold all his interests together. There he is, bankrolling Karl Marx while he writes Das Kapital, the devastating critique of owners of dark satanic mills of which he, Engels, is one. Well, the Spouse is the Engels of our time - all bleeding heart sympathy for the working class, while benefiting at the same time from unearned income generated by her shareholdings.
So I point out to her that WorkChoices (there is a word for those words that have capital letters in the middle - I forget what it is but it certainly proves that the Man of Steel is nothing if not modern) will make her richer. If, as she suspects, the whole scheme is a dodge to squeeze more out of the proletariat to create a greater surplus for the bourgeoisie, then the value of her shares will rise, that being her part of the surplus.
Why should she worry if every Bob and Roberta Cratchit in the land has to work on Christmas Day while Tiny Tim is at home whittling himself a crutch? That's a happy ending, my dear. The stocks of Scrooge and Marley Pty Ltd will go through the roof.
As an owner of capital, I tell her, she does not give jobs to the impecunious out of the goodness of her heart. Scrooge and Marley Pty Ltd are not a charity. Given the choice they would prefer to employ machines, but there are some jobs that at this stage in industrial development can only be done by a couple of hands full of fingers and opposable thumbs.
That being the case what the company needs are the absolutely cheapest, most biddable hands it can find.
"Well, I don't like it," she says. "So what does that make me?"
"A class traitor, my sweet."