Walk into a shearing shed today and up to half the workers are women, many are degree educated, most well traveled and many talk of careers in the wool industry. How far Australian society has shifted is starkly apparent in this new shearing industry now under attack by an aggressive labor movement.
The sun may still scorch the body on 45-degree days. The shearing sheds may still provide a good movie set for a remake of Jack Thompson's famous film, Sunday Too Far Away, but little else remains the same. The 1970's classic depicted the hard, violent and beer soaked life of the Australian outback shearer. This rugged, matey and sexist environment gave birth to the Australian union movement and the images have long been ingrained in the romantic psyche of a nation eager to pinpoint its identity.
In the new shearing industry frequently all workers are staunchly independent contractors. The shearing award in place since the 1920's is ignored because of its millstone like effect on shearers' incomes. Sure, the beer is still there (something has to take the sting out of the heat) but the workers themselves do not tolerate drunken workers, as they destroy the productivity of the whole team.
Moera and Barry Hammonds' shearing operation based in Charleville Queensland, provides a colorful case study of this new Australian environment. Of the 300 or so free contractors who work through their operation each year, large numbers are in their early 20's and many are women. This is a big turnaround for an industry until recently dominated by ageing men and a looming workforce shortage.
Men may continue to do most of the shearing, but the days of rough handling and abusing the sheep being shorn are diminishing. A shearer causing harm to a sheep is likely to receive verbal abuse from any one of the female wool classers, who are sensitive to the sheep's well being.
And it is in wool classing that the revolution is most stark. Wool prices vary according to the quality of the wool. Most baled wool leaving the farm gate averages 20 microns and fetches $3. 50 kg for the woolgrower. In comparison 19 micron baled wool can be worth $7. 00 kg and 16 micron (relatively rare) $100 plus kg. Through better people systems in the shed, more exacting baling and treatment of wool can occur. The future of wool growing rests largely on higher prices through better quality. This is the free contractors focus.
Moera Hammonds is a gun wool classer. She came 4th at the prestigious International Golden Shears wool handling championships in New Zealand, the highest ever achieved by an Australian. Her professionalism with wool classing is reflected in the training she gives new contractors, the standards she and her teams expect of themselves and the business mentality of the contractors toward doing a quality job.
The outcome according to farmers is a better wool clip and higher wool prices. And for this the farmers pay more. The contractors remuneration consistently outstrips that of the antiquated award which tends to "dumb down" both attitudes and pay.
Against this backdrop the free contractors working through the Hammonds are having their new life's values challenged by the doyens of the old economy. The AWU have made application under Section 275 of the Queensland IR Act to force the free contractors to be bonded employees and required to work under the shearing award on less remuneration under inferior conditions. In the IRC process the contractors are forced to make public their private tax returns.
This is the same, aggressive, anti-independent, anti-new economy type legislation that the NSW government tried to ram through parliament late last week. The labor movement is obsessed with forcing people into award wage slavery. They hate the tide of history in the swing to independence and the 20% of Australian working men and women who classify themselves as independently self employed.
In the shearing industry the AWU claim that nothing has changed and see no reason to change. They hold to a view of society based on warring classes. Yet the independent contractors working with the Hammonds see their future tied to commercial co-operation not disputation.
This Queensland case and the NSW Bill involve more than a battle of legal semantics. On trial is the old verses the new; new thinkers realising the challenge, satisfaction and financial rewards of being in charge of ones own future, verses those who hanker for class structures of the past. On trial, are Australian values!
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