Not just any job - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Miriam Lyons
JOHN HOWARD HAS BEEN PRIME MINISTER since before I could vote. I'm starting to find it hard to imagine Australia without him and his acrobatic approach to language. Wasn't "freedom" born in the stock exchange? Aren't "families" just groups of individuals who share a mortgage? Isn't "choice" about deciding which private school to send your kids to by working a seventy-hour week? And aren't we happy about the prospect of earning less for each one of those seventy hours because living without job security is part of "the Australian way of life"?
He may have the sex appeal of horn-rimmed glasses, but Howard's ideas are seductive. Who doesn't want to be relaxed and comfortable? Neo-liberal economics is like a soothing bedtime story – don't worry, be happy, the invisible hand of the market is rocking the cradle.
Despite the hype, there is usually truth behind most stereotypes, and Gen Y is no exception. Young people tend to trust their employers more than their parents did, and they don't have the same class-consciousness as previous generations.
Unions New South Wales secretary John Robertson says: "What we're finding from the research we're doing is that young people don't necessarily see CEOs' big salaries as a bad thing. I think there is a notion that you can be anything you want to be in Australia, and a lot of young people actually aspire to getting to the point where they're one of those people. So, rather than attack the CEO, we need to talk about what the CEO is doing to get those sorts of outcomes."
At the Fair Go Conference last year Helen Trinca warned that without unions as a countervailing force: "It is going to be easier and easier for companies to sell their story around work." The unions are now planning some storytelling of their own. Robertson says: "It's about saying that if things keep changing the way they are, then in twenty years' time we're not going to have 27 per cent casual workers, we're going to have 35 per cent. It won't simply be while you're at university, there's every chance that when you get out of university you'll be working a casual job which means that there's no guarantee of what your salary will be for a week or a month; you won't be able to budget."
We may not resent CEO pay, but it's pretty certain that we're not too keen on unpaid overtime, getting sacked for turning eighteen, working public holidays without penalty rates, or unpaid "trials". We're probably not so keen on earning $12.75 an hour for the rest of our lives, either.
"Young people are impacted by individual contracts where they are told ‘here's a job, take it or leave it, and by the way we're no longer paying penalty rates on Saturdays and Sundays'. Those sorts of things will motivate young people to get involved," says Robertson.
But no matter how cleverly they frame their messages, or how well they manage to reach out to a group of workers who regularly switch jobs and industries, unions aren't going to be able to tackle this one by themselves.
IN A PRESS CONFERENCE GIVEN FIVE MINUTES AFTER the release of the first draft of WorkChoices last year, journalists asked John Howard the obvious question: why change? "Economic reform," he replied, "is like participating in a race towards an ever-receding finishing line. You have to keep going."
The push for a free market in labour will not end until it is stopped. Stopping it will require a fundamental rethink of our attitudes to work and wealth in an affluent age. It will need an alliance between the lucky and the unlucky – between those who are feeling the bite of the changes, and those who are unwilling to have every aspect of their lives defined by competition, self-promotion, and insecurity. It will mean a new agenda focused on choice, freedom and flexibility for all workers – not just those cushioned by a temporary sellers market. It will mean deciding whether we continue to let the invisible hand rock our cradle. ♦