A Few Well Chosen Words, Mr Howard Calls The Election

John Howard
Originally uploaded by Sydney Weasel

It isn't about new leaders and it isn't about old leaders. It is about the right leader. Mr Howard is the right leader for Australia

Within a day of the election being called, Mr Rudd has claimed there would be 'the mother of all smear campaigns" and Mr Rudd has delivered. "health workers and emergency services staff could be forced to sign Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) if John Howard is re-elected as Prime Minister" Mr Rudd claimed.

Turns out that a much ballyhoo-ed report claiming to be an independant study into AWA's from Sydney University involved union funding and a committed socialist researcher who wanted to condemn Federal Government IR legislation. Another of the report’s authors, Michelle Jakubauskas, now reveals what was excluded on the grounds that “there was nothing of particular interest” in the stats:

For your interest, I found that overall employees on collective agreements are the most likely to have negative attitudes towards with more than a quarter (27 per cent) feeling that they are not consulted by managers, while 28 per cent state that they do not trust management. In comparison 23 per cent of those on AWA’s disagree that managers consult them and 22 per cent disagree that they trust management.

The report finds that union members are more likely to feel negatively about management than non-union members. So, the higher levels of distrust and lack of consultation among employees on collective agreements is likely to be due to the high rate of union membership among these employees.

In other words, AWA workers like and respect their bosses better. A few well chosen words make all the difference for the independant report.