AWAs only help professionals, not the majority

Profs David Peetz (Griffith Uni) and Alison Preston (Curtin Uni) have shown the lie behind the half-truths of proponents of AWAs, showing that professional males do much better on AWAs, and women in non-professional roles do particularly poorly.

Yes, the government and business claim average wages are better under AWAs than CAs, but with the median AWA worker earned 16.3 per cent less than the median CA worker in 2006.  Remember, 50% of workers are below the median, 50% above.  Overall, 69% of workers were worse off under AWAs than CAs.

"AWAs, Collective Agreements and Earnings: Beneath the Aggregate Data" was released through the Victorian Department of Innovation, Industry & Regional Development.

Given that a relatively small group (professionals, particularly males, who are on a moderately level playing field with their employers) have done better under AWAs than CAs, the majority losing out, the increase in average benefits of AWAs over CAs can indicate just how poorly typical (rather than average) workers have lost.

Remember too, that senior executives as a class were never on CAs, and their remuneration has been outstripping even the professional classes.

The analysis shows that rather than being used for flexibility, the AWAs were used by employers for one of two reasons:

• Cost cutting
• Union avoidance in industries with a history of strong unions, such as mining

Tests for the hypothesis that AWAs were implemented for flexibility and the benefit of both employers and workers failed to show higher hourly wages than CAs across a range of industries.

The bottom line is that AWAs have been implemented for the benefit of employers, not workers.  The benefits have been lower costs to business, or increased political power (and the ultimate ability to lower the costs of a disempowered workforce.

The most disadvantaged group, appeared to be female labourers and related workers – in 2006 those on AWAs were paid 26 per cent less than similar women on CAs.  Indeed, in 2006 female labourers and related workers on AWAs were receiving 20 per cent less even than the award-reliant average for that occupation.

This makes working much less attractive for women, and if they cannot get an indentity as part of a workforce, they’ll be more likely to seek an identity as a mother, staying at home, making babies, bolstering total GDP.

Has this, together with the baby bonus, managed to increase population growth?  It looks like it: between 1999 and 2004, only one year (2001) had total population growth above 1.2% (1.36).  2006 figures show a nation-wide population growth of 1.4%, with WA running at 2.1%.

Now, given a GDP running at around 3.5%, give or take, depending on your timeslicing, and remembering that babies and kids force a lot of extra spending (especially on an extra room) above that required to keep a 50-year-old happy, it’s fairly obvious that real per-capita GDP growth hasn’t been flash, and ties in with the flat productivity growth (children aren’t very productive because they don’t work).

Bottom line: AWAs have led to an increased proportion of the national paypacket flowing from the majority (already at the lower or median payrates) to the minority of professionals who were already well-remunerated.

Not really surprising, is it?