Time to Dump Class War – Not So Fast

By Robert McClelland and Chris Wright

Shadow Minister McClelland argues that a uniform industrial relations system is essential in our export oriented economy, however Chris Wright challenges McClelland's perspective and assumptions

He also canvasses an approach to industrial democracy by which he means works councils and a collaborative approach (while I have always seen industrial democracy as a way workers can actually control the workplace, not so that they can help the bosses make money), and he argues against the class basis of the language and actions of union leaders, seeing them as alienating small business, particularly in relation to unfair dismissal.

Chris Wright challenges McClelland's perspective and assumptions, pointing out that his views on unfair dismissal and uniform legislation seem to sit pretty neatly alongside those of Tony Abbott. He says that instead of paying so much attention to needs of small business, the ALP should perhaps listen to small business employees, who comprise a pretty fair lump of the workforce. Only 4% of employees in small business are covered by a collective agreement, and collective agreements are clearly more beneficial to workers than individual contracts or AWAs.

Wright sees McClelland as one of the ranks of the ALP who is distancing himself from unions, the founders of the ALP and the force that underpins workers' rights in Australia.

As Wrights puts it "Instead of implicitly attacking the union movement and capitulating to the language of the conservatives by saying that the class war is over, McClelland should perhaps acknowledge that issues such as wage disparity and longer working hours are becoming worse, and that unions appear to be amongst the few institutions seeking to address these problems".