In a significant but under-reported speech in July this year, Prime Minister John Howard announced that in his view the most important economic development of the past 20 years is the rise of the "enterprise worker".
In describing this new worker, he not only identified the army of independent contractors who make up some 28 per cent of the private-sector workforce but also pointed to vast numbers of employees who see working life differently to the ideas of the past.
People once wanted lifetime security in full-time work and repaid this by loyalty to the boss.
Now, many people see income security as coming from their own effort. They rely on themselves. Expectations of a lifetime job with one boss is seen as potentially stifling. Work and lifestyle have merged rather than being separate. Constant change is part of work.
But in his speech the Prime Minister did more than make a casual observation about the changing attitudes of workers. What he did was declare that the Government's workplace reform agenda is targeted to respond to the needs and demands of this new work attitude.
And it's not a narrow appeal. He sees this new worker as coming from a state of mind existing as much within the blue-collar sector as in the professional and white-collar groups.
What the Prime Minister in effect did in his speech, was announce that the changed work attitudes have crossed over into politics. In embracing the enterprise worker, he was rejecting the traditional idea of class warfare in Australia.
Broadly speaking, the politics of Australia since the Second World War has been dominated by battles between left- and right-wing ideologies. These opposing political positions are tied to the idea that business always involves war between workers and bosses.
The left argues that exploitation of workers by bosses is inevitable in capitalist societies and government has to have institutions that stop bosses exploiting workers. The right argues that the bosses are needed for wealth creation and if bosses are constrained too much, wealth creation stops.
From the perspective of the left, the key institution that has operated in Australia to stop worker exploitation is the industrial relations system. The Government is now going to change that. The left say this will strip workers of their institutional protection from exploiting bosses.
The union campaign against the changes plays on the idea that even if individual workers have confidence in their own boss, it can be imagined that some other, undefined boss may exploit some other undefined worker.
Ordinarily and in the past, the Government should have been expected to counter this campaign by mounting a robust defence of the wealth creation value of bosses.
However, in his July speech, the Prime Minister was restrained in his defence of the value of bosses. What is different this time is that the Prime Minister's key thrust is a rejection of the left-right debate and the launching of a newer idea.
He says that the enterprise worker mindset is widespread. Many people, he says, no longer see themselves as employees or employers, workers or bosses but rather as businesses -- their own business.
If the Prime Minister is correct, the implications are substantial, but not just for the union movement. It impacts equally on Australian business lobby groups. Culturally, industry bodies are attuned to running a defence of the right of bosses to be bosses. They do this partly through the industrial relations system.
However, in his July speech, the Prime Minister is saying that workplace wars have dying relevance and that the new laws will shift away from favouring the traditional employer-employee collective structures. This will be done by first moving the emphasis of employment law, to focus on individual relations between an employee and employer. Second, new law will protect the rights of independent contractors as small businesses.
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