AWA: A Wacky Arrangement

Although this is hardly a new issue, it is still relevant and important. The amazing Liberal brainwave, the AWA is set to increase once more the ever widening chasm between the disgustingly rich and the barely surviving. Let's look at the problem from a semantic point of view, which, politics aside, is my main issue. The Australian Workplace Agreement. The first two words are fine. It is Australia, and it applies to the workplace. The problem I have is that last little word, Agreement. With whom may I ask? Why with the employee of course (by the by, did you know that centrelink refers to it's applicants as clients and customers? The word employee, and unemployed, is virtually redundant. We are all consultants and contractors now). Here's the catch - the very word agreement implies that the employee has some choice, some power of negotiation. That's certainly the way that the Liberal government spins it in the million dollar ads. More money, more flexibility, more of what you, the worker, want. More Bullshit! The AWA's are drafted by the corporations for mass distribution to the workers with the terms that the company "offers". The employee has one choice, one area of negotiation, and only one. They choose whether or not to sign. If they don't? They have no job! Johnnie FuckYou Howard recently celebrated the success of the AWA with one million signatures. Like most people have a choice! Noone I know is able to reject paid work to take a political stand - we all have bills to pay. The anti-unionist Jihad of Johnnie "My eyebrows are bigger than my penis" Howard is an abomination to the very principles of democracy upon which Western Civilisation is based. As far as I am concerned, Economic Rationalism sacrifices the welfare of the people for a pretty National Economy Balance Sheet, and a country that places the corporation above the worker and the mighty dollar above the educational, health and cultural needs of the people is a country that has it's priorities seriously fucked up.