The Textile Clothing and Footwear Union just don't get it! The icon Australian clothing company Fletcher Jones has announced that, after 70 years, it will close their local manufacturing operations in Warrnambool, Victoria and Mt Gambia, South Australia. In response, the union has accused Fletcher Jones of being un-Australian motivated only by higher profits, and by implication guilty of incompetent management.
What the union doesn't get is that, if any alleged managerial deficiencies exist, they are at least in part directly attributable to the union campaigns and regulations that flow from the campaigns. The union movement across most sectors barely recognises the link between its activities, labour regulation and managerial competency.
The clothing manufacturing award is the only major Australian award that has not been subject to award simplification under the Workplace Relations Act. It is long, hugely complex and constraining on management decisions. Among its many clauses, it dictates rates to be paid, for example on the sewing of a button, determines how, when and if contracting out can occur and requires extensive reporting of activities to the union.
Running parallel to the award is outworker legislation in New South Wales and Victoria, which largely mirrors the complex award but goes further by controlling contracts between manufacturers and retailers, including extensive reporting to the union of contract details.
Supporting this industry controlling regulation is perhaps the most successful business intimidation campaign conducted in Australia, run by the union, heavily funded by state governments and co-ordinated with church and other groups.
The end result is the systemic destruction of entrepreneurial management flair within the industry. The clothing sector in Australia now no longer cares about manufacturing locally because any entrepreneurial effort cannot produce results, given the risks posed by destructive regulation and brand attack. The clothing sector is resigned to a future where some design is done locally and all manufacturing done off shore. The manufacturing management capacity has been stripped from the industry.
The union blames tariff elimination. They don't understand that domestic clothing manufacturing could have a future but only if management and entrepreneurship is free wheeling within the structures of normal commercial regulations. The destruction of management capacity through labour regulation that has nothing to do with workers' rights destroys creative entrepreneurship. Consequently, say goodbye to the industry and jobs!
It's this, that perhaps more than anything else, that has motivated the major industry association, such as Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Australian Industry Group, Australian Mines and Metals Association, Housing Industry Association and the Business Council of Australia to express concern with the federal ALP industrial relations policy. Each of these industry associations understands that for businesses and industries to prosper entrepreneurship and management capacity must be maximised.
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