The return of WorkChoices? Productivity Commission’s attack on workers’ rights

John Rainford fears The return of WorkChoices? Productivity Commission’s attack on workers’ rights.

Employer representatives and Abbott government ministers see the virtue of the inquiry as identifying impediments to jobs growth.

What this can only lead to is either a watering down of present minimum rates and conditions or their complete abolition in the name of creating jobs.

The idea that cutting the minimum wage and penalty rates will create jobs is a myth born of voodoo economics in the US, where the evidence is that higher minimum wages actually raise employment.

The only result of a lower minimum wage would be to cut employment opportunities and increase the number of working poor. It is nevertheless regularly rolled out as a favoured policy prescription by conservatives trapped in a time-warp of hatred for unions and the workers they represent.

Emphasis Mine

The laws of motion for Capitalism require the Capitalists to continually attack the wages and conditions of workers. It is only through the expropiation of the surplus value created by labour that the Capitalists are able to realise profit.

This increasing profit leads to the periodic crises in Capitalism in which the workers do not have enough money to buy all of the goods that their labour produce. This is the classic crisis of overproduction.