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Fighting the Last War

Thursday, 8th June, 2006

Busting the power of trade unions has been a dream of John Howard's for most of his 31 years in Parliament. Gaining control of the Senate last year left him with the power to do it. His version of industrial relations law is now up and running.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures this morning raise the question of whether victory has come when the war Mr Howard started fighting in 1974 is now well and truly over.

The trend of working days lost - a measure of how irresponsible trade unions distort the labour market - is shown below.

The trend is clearly down and strikes are not the impediment to progress old political warriors used to berate them as.

In the March quarter of this year the number of working days lost per 1000 employees was 3.4. Back in the December quarter of 1992 this measure peaked at 104.6 days. The average quarterly figure since March 1985 is just under 30 days per 1000 employees.

No obvious reason in those figures to embark on a fundamental change to the industrial relations system.

ABS employment and unemployment figures were also released this morning. The headline figure had unemployment falling to 4.9%.

The proportion of the Australian population now working for a living has rarely been higher - 61.2% in May, marginally down from 61.4% in the middle of last year but significantly higher than what Australia has been used to over the last 30 years.

Hard to find evidence there that there is some fundamental problem in the labour market that needs radical surgery and there is none in the unemployment figures either. The proportion of the Australian population seeking full time work is the lowest it has been in 30 years.