Working justice and the will of God

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Working justice and the will of God

• Rev. Dr. Ann Wansbrough
• UnitingCare NSW.ACT

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• This presentation was delivered at the Public
  Briefing
• The New Industrial Relations Agenda
• organised by Monash University and the University
  of Western Australia
• Carillion Room, Sofitel Melbourne
• http//www.conferences.monash.org/industrialrelati
  ons/
• http//www.monash.edu.au/news/newsline/story/643
• Monday 24 October 2005

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Working justice and the will of God

• In the just reward of labour,
• Gods will is done
• In the help we give our neighbour,
• Gods will is done
• (Frederick Pratt Green Together in Song Hymn 168
  verse 2a)

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• God has told you O mortal what is good and what
  does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
  and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your
  God.
• (Micah 68 NRSV)

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Ecumenical concerns
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14 member churches of National Council of
Churches 1999

• Changes to workplace relations are no panacea for
  unemployment, and will not, on their own, create
  more jobs at better pay.
• (A covenant for employment)

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National Council of Churches 1999

• What is needed is
• A political commitment to full employment
• Within a framework set by human rights
  obligations
• Right of low paid workers not merely to a safety
  net but to fair and just remuneration and
  conditions of work that take account of family
  and other responsibilities
• Strategy of employment creation
• Labour market programs eg training

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Should the churches participate in the debate?
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Should the churches participate in the debate?

• Concept of work in religious belief
• Church as employer
• Pastoral responsibility
• Jobs Network
• Democracy
• Reject ad hominem argument
• Evidence and argument (discourse ethics)
• Onus on government

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What shapes the Christian critique?

• Church as Employer experience
• Human rights
• Christian belief

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Church as Employer
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Uniting Church

• Church as Employer principles
• Just wages and conditions
• Opposed to erosion of awards
• Importance of adequate standard for local
  management committees to use
• Cooperation with unions

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• WorkChoice issues include
• How to ensure justice for church employees,
  especially those in community services
• Tension between purpose (eg care of people) and
  responsibility to those who provide the care
• Funding issues for community services when awards
  are merely safety net, not real payable rates and
  conditions
• HR management quality control at local level when
  legal standards eroded awards, unfair dismissal
• Some of what church thinks appropriate may be
  prohibited

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Human rights
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Human rights

• Ratified by Australia
• Common ground in public discourse
• Universal, indivisible, inalienable

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Human rights

• Work for all who want it
• Just and favourable remuneration and conditions
• Equal pay for equal work
• Trade unions
• Rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of
  working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as
  well as remuneration for public holidays

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• Occupation health and safety
• Right to family assistance
• Right to adequate standard of living for oneself
  and ones family and its continuous improvement
• Equality of women
• ILO 1948
• Right to association
• Collective bargaining not merely another choice
• Right to strike

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• Human rights universal, indivisible,
  inalienable

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• WorkChoices issues
• Work for all who want it (maybe) but at what
  pay rate and under what conditions?
• AWAs encouraged ahead of collective agreements
  contrary to concept of equal pay depend on
  negotiating power
• Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard is
  minimalist
• Rest, leisure and working hours and safety - at
  risk when awards can be overridden

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• WorkChoices Issues
• Freedom of association turned into freedom from
  association
• Union activity restrained
• Right to take industrial action so restrained it
  effectively disappears

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Christian beliefs
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• Themes of Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)
• God liberates from exploitation and slavery
• Ten commandments as response to liberation
• You shall not steal their labour or their time
• You shall not covet

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• God has a bias towards and on behalf of the poor
• Biblical and Patristic tradition
• Wesley
• Booth
• Catholic Social Teaching

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• What are effects of WorkChoices on the poor, both
  
• those excluded from the workforce and
• the lowest paid workers with least negotiating
  power?
• These two groups may not be set against one
  another

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• Themes in Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) 2
• God condemns those who are rich at the expense of
  the poor
• Workers must be treated properly
• National wellbeing depends on justice
• Human life flourishes when human beings nurture
  peace, the common good
• Distributive justice

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• WorkChoices Issues
• Based on view that workplace relations is about
  prosperity rather than justice (Access Economics
  report for BCA)
• Exploitation because no clear connection between
  changes and alleged benefits such as
  productivity, higher wages, choices for workers
  and prosperity

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• Sin a realistic assessment of negative side of
  human life
• Individual
• Structural
• Systemic
• Temptations facing employers due to, eg
  competition, shareholder demands or greed
  (community sector lack of funding, high need)

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• Government is responsible to God role is to
• Constrain sin through law (protect poor) ie
  regulate the market
• Protect and enhance the common good (improve
  situation of the poor, prevent poverty)
• Human rights as agreed benchmarks

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• Dean Drayton (President of Uniting Church)
• Christians are called to challenge systems and
  structures that breed hate, greed, oppression,
  poverty, injustice, and fear. Anything less than
  this is a watered-down expression of faith
• (quoted by Christopher Pearson Poverty of Church
  Ideas Weekend Australian, 22-23 October 2005)

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• William Booth (Founder, Salvation Army)
• the laws of supply and demand, and all the rest
  of the excuses by which those who stand on firm
  ground salve their conscience when they let their
  brother sinkoften enough are responsible for his
  disaster. Coffin ships are a direct result of the
  wretched policy of non-interference with the
  legitimate operations of commerce.

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• WorkChoices fails to constrain sin
• Encouragement for individual rather than
  collective agreements
• AWAs will not be assessed before registration and
  will not be public documents so cannot be
  monitored or struck out valid even if entered
  into under duress

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• Workchoices fails to constrain sin
• Abolition of no disadvantage test
• Billy AWA or no job (and no Newstart allowance)
• Workplaces gradually become award free, has to
  meet only AFPCS
• No coercion empty rhetoric eg lockouts
  (already allowed)
• No award protection for independent contractors

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• Workchoices fails to constrain sin
• Principles for fair pay commission do not give
  priority to human rights, living wage for family
• Principles for the fair pay commission and the
  reasons for exemptions from unfair dismissal
  laws subordinate the needs of workers to other
  agenda

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• Workchoices fails to constrain sin
• Abolition of no disadvantage test agreements
  override awards
• Awards only apply in current job, unless new
  employer chooses award
• No unfair dismissal protection for half of
  workforce

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• Workchoices fails to constrain sin
• AIRC no longer able to impose compulsory
  decisions in intractable disputes or to improve
  award conditions
• Disputes now internal matters for voluntary
  resolution ignores power and resource
  differential
• Lockouts already becoming longest runnig disputes

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• Workchoices fails to constrain sin
• Lockouts already allowed in circumstances not
  allowed in other OECD nations (so what is duress
  or coercion?)
• Distorted idea of the common good

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• Workchoices constrains goodness
• Erodes ethical basis of workplace relations
• Makes workplace relations a private even secret
  matter, using cooperation as excuse
• Shifts philosophical and moral framework of the
  system
• Change from conciliation and arbitration power to
  corporations power means loss of 100 years of
  jurisprudence that takes seriously the needs of
  workers
• Corporations power focus on functioning in a
  commercial environment

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• Workchoices constrains goodness
• Priority is agreement making at work place level
• Awards reduced to safety net on a limited range
  of conditions which will gradually erode,
  becoming useless as justice benchmarks
• No provision for awards for emerging industries
• More work for small employers if they want to be
  just award will no longer be adequate guide

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• Workchoices constrains goodness
• Prohibits clauses such as
• Payment while on union training programs and paid
  union meetings
• Remedy for unfair dismissal
• Requiring that a future agreement must be a union
  collective agreement
• Prohibiting AWAs
• Mandating union involvement in dispute resolution
• Punishes attempts to include them

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• Workchoices constrains goodness
• State laws that allow industrial action will be
  overridden if someone seeks order to stop a
  particular industrial action
• Overrides state deeming provisions for
  independent contractors awards no longer
  protect them
• Goal is a single national system in which states
  have referred IR powers to Commonwealth

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• God created human beings
• God loves human beings
• God redeems human beings through the work of
  Christ
• Children as gift from God
• Human beings have absolute value

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• Human beings may not be used as means to ends
• Moral value of work is different from that
  assigned by the market
• Human beings are entitled to livelihood and
  security
• Solidarity of human beings solidarity of
  workers
• Value of parenting

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• The material, the economic, is subordinate to the
  spiritual and the social.
• Prosperity and progress is about human wellbeing,
  a decent life with shared time for family and
  community
• UCA genuine wealth not money but those matters
  that contribute to human wellbeing (1988 report)
• ABS Measuring progress

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• Work is one of the ways people express their
  God-given human nature
• Dignity of work
• Livelihood
• Value to society
• Co-creation
• Human labour is not a commodity wages and
  conditions must enhance human dignity and society

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• WorkChoices concerns
• Wages and conditions determined by market
• Reduced security hours, pay, conditions, unfair
  dismissal

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• Loss of human dignity
• Loss of human rights
• Low paid workers sacrificed in name of reducing
  unemployment inappropriate and unnecessary

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• God is Sustainer, ie God gives life and works for
  health and wellbeing of humankind
• Health and safety, freedom from injury, matter

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• Health and safety put at risk by
• 38 hour maximum ordinary hours averaged over year
  no maximum for day or week
• Policies that lead to lower pay lead to longer
  hours to make a living wage
• National system ignores interaction between
  wages, conditions and OHS
• Longer hours mean more accidents in workplace,
  including on road, more stress

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• God created human beings as social beings
• family as extended family, local community
• shared time important Sabbath rest

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• Abolition of no disadvantage test and averaging
  of maximum ordinary hours over a year means
  employers now have more flexibility to require
  employees to work any time 24/7 or public
  holidays.

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• Gods providence God is Provider
• Earth and its resources as gift to be shared, not
  for exploitation by few
• The Christian concept of justice is distributive
  justice a sharing of prosperity

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• No principles to shape employers relationships
  or negotiations with employees or the responsible
  sharing of prosperity

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• Access Economic report suggests any
  redistribution through tax system should not
  increase the amount available for redistribution,
  even though workplace will be unfair.

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• God create woman and man in Gods own image
  equality of women

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• WorkChoices Concerns
• Women will be disproportionately affected by
  changes to setting of minimum wages and by
  abolition of no disadvantage test since they
  lack the same leverage in negotiation eg want
  jobs close to home, appropriate hours and
  therefore have less choice of employer
• Problems for male workers affect womens family
  responsibilities

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Working justice and the will of God

• In the just reward of labour,
• Gods will is done
• In the help we give our neighbour,
• Gods will is done
• (Frederick Pratt Green Together in Song Hymn 168
  verse 2a)