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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 8 Hansard (8 August) . . Page.. 2565 ..
MR SPEAKER (continuing):
"The inability at your office and your department to deal with 'productivity bargaining' as opposed to making the trade union movement responsible and accountable for "budget outcomes" displays a degree of incompetence rarely seen in any other area [the] AMEU operates in.
"If the ACT Government wants a productivity agreement' that can, and will, deliver extreme change leading to greater efficiencies and a more effective ACT Government, then I strongly urge your Treasury officials be directed to take responsibility for Budget cuts and not expect the trade unions to do the cost-cutting for you."
Ms Follett's only comment last night was that industrial negotiations were continuing. It is understood that Industrial Relations Minister Wayne Berry will meet representatives of all major public-sector unions soon to discuss agreements leading up to the creation of a separate ACT Public Service.
Trying to sustain life in the corpse of the ACT's old IR system
It must be frustrating for a left-wing union to help a left-dominated Labor Government to power then be subject to the same "negative cost-cutting, bean counting" approach that the union might expect from a Liberal Government.This week's spat between the Automotive, Metals and Engineering Union and the Treasurer, Rosemary Follett, during which strikes were threatened, is an indication of this frustration.
It may also be indicative of something more fundamentally worrying in the way the ACT industrial relations system works.
But more of that later.
Ms Follett has been described by one close to her (in approving tones) as "parsimonious"-not a traditional virtue for the comrades of the Left who might still prefer to spend up big for social justice and the struggle for work socialism.
This Government has more concern for the real politik of the Grants Commission than for ideology.
For this, the people of Canberra, particularly in the long term, might thank the Government. But industrial relations might be the last, expensive refuge of the ideological dinosaur.
It is not that the unions refuse to embrace the need for change. In fact, the Automotive, Metals and Engineering Union has been (as the metals unions often have) quite accepting of enterprise bargaining. The AMEU secretary, Des Heaney, sees it as the way for his members to survive in a tight economic framework.
He puts the blame for stalled negotiations on his left-faction comrade, the Treasurer, and her department, the "bean-counters", who demanded detailed costings of all the proposals.
He thinks it should have gone through easily, his members collecting their 4 per cent pay rise, and the changes being implemented.
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