The main reason unions are doing so well in their campaign against Work Choices is because they are appealing to long-held conservative values. Consequently, the Howard government is caught in a dilemma, as key elements of its labour reforms attack Australian conservatism.
This is perhaps a counter-intuitive concept. Surely the Howard government is conservative and the unions are radical?
Look at the issues, though. First, there is the structure of the working week, the nature of public holidays and the connection with traditional ideas of the family.
Then there is the idea that a stable society is heavily dependent upon security in employment. These are profoundly conservative concepts that Work Choices upsets.
Consider that the new system gives workers and employers the right to eliminate pay loadings on public holidays, weekends and shift work and average hourly rates are supposed to rise to compensate. Weekly pay stays the same, but the hourly structures alter.
Until now, the industrial relations system largely stopped this happening. Why?
Pay loadings were introduced originally as a disincentive to businesses to operate outside "9 to 5" hours and to compensate people for working in these periods. It reinforced the structure of a society where work, leisure, family and religious norms aligned with the Christian ethic.
Men worked from 9am to 5pm, children went to school from 9am to 3pm, the family gathered at night for dinner, football was played and watched on Saturday, Sunday was for church and the family roast and public holidays followed the Christian calendar.
So dominant was this lifestyle pattern that it became entrenched as a fundamental conservative value underpinning family, church, community and state. And labour awards under the old industrial relations system were deliberately structured to bolster this.
But Australian society has changed. Public holidays still follow the Christian calendar but churches know that they must function in a secular society. Religious beliefs are diverse. People want shopping and other services at any time. Sport takes place on any day of the week. Schools run child-minding programs to accommodate parents' needs.
The old industrial relations system, however, barely adapted to this new society. Awards and industrial agreements maintained pay loadings but under the marketing banner of workers "rights" rather than "imposition". Labour law enforced subservience to older values.
The idea that security in employment is essential to a stable society is also under attack by Work Choices. The argument is that if people don't have a secure job, they can't get a loan or may lose their house if they lose their job, and that this creates a vulnerable, unstable society.
Fear of losing income is, of course, a sensible concern. But the idea of security of income being possible only through legally imposed job permanency is a strongly conservative position and proved a foolish fantasy with the mass downsizing by firms in the 1980s and 1990s. Most people now realise jobs are secure only if firms are making good profits.
Job permanency has been replaced by the realisation that what is important is continuity of income. This is not necessarily achieved by a single job with one employer. In fact, that can be a risky strategy. What's necessary is to be entrepreneurial in the approach to work. People need always to be alert to the next job -- and that includes the 61 per cent of the workforce who have a permanent job.
Clearly, society and individuals have changed. Lifestyles are now a significant mix of many influences and differ from past ideas of family, community, state and stability.
The government focused its Work Choices sales pitch on economic arguments but the cultural debate has been left almost exclusively to unions.
As the Rudd opposition lines up with unions on key policy planks, the next election will place central cultural values before the voters. The government offers policy that reflects a changed community but is not selling this message. In compairson, the union/ Rudd team offers a strong appeal to conservatism.
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