WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.360
<v Chair>Hello, my name's Mark Cully, I'm a member of the Advisory Committee for the Festival of Ideas

2
00:00:04.360 --> 00:00:10.020
<v Chair>and it's my great privilege to be able to chair this session, which goes under the title Hard Labour.

3
00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:14.860
<v Chair>If you're expecting a session on imprisonment, then you should leave now.

4
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:20.260
<v Chair>You should all of course know that South Australia was the only colony that was not settled as a penal colony.

5
00:00:20.820 --> 00:00:26.640
<v Chair>But we are going to be talking possibly about another kind of bondage, that is work,

6
00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:31.520
<v Chair>and certainly some people might see it as a kind of bondage.

7
00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:35.180
<v Chair>At the very least, there's a widespread view that it's a source of much stress

8
00:00:35.180 --> 00:00:39.040
<v Chair>and much distress on individuals and families and communities.

9
00:00:40.660 --> 00:00:43.840
<v Chair>Now I was trying to think about something profound to say to open up this session

10
00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:47.400
<v Chair>and of course I was drawn to Monty Python.

11
00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:54.920
<v Chair>And you'll recall the skit of the four Yorkshiremen sitting around the pool in the tropical resort

12
00:00:54.920 --> 00:00:56.620
<v Chair>sipping the Chateau de Châtelet.

13
00:00:58.120 --> 00:01:02.100
<v Chair>Reminiscing about the awful time that they had when they were kids, the living and working conditions.

14
00:01:02.540 --> 00:01:05.180
<v Chair>Now pardon me, I can't do a particularly good Yorkshire accent,

15
00:01:05.320 --> 00:01:09.180
<v Chair>but when I were a lad, our dad would get us up at 4am,

16
00:01:09.720 --> 00:01:14.300
<v Chair>send us down a mill where we worked 14 hours a day, day in, day out, for six pence a week,

17
00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:17.340
<v Chair>and when we got home, he thrashed us to sleep.

18
00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.200
<v Chair>To which the friends of course responded,

19
00:01:23.020 --> 00:01:23.800
<v Chair>Oh shit!

20
00:01:31.320 --> 00:01:33.020
<v Chair>And it ends up saying,

21
00:01:35.300 --> 00:01:36.500
<v Chair>the final comment was,

22
00:01:36.540 --> 00:01:37.900
<v Chair>you try and tell the kids of today that,

23
00:01:37.940 --> 00:01:39.160
<v Chair>and they won't believe you.

24
00:01:41.140 --> 00:01:44.620
<v Chair>Which seems to me a sort of slightly ambivalent way of ending it.

25
00:01:44.680 --> 00:01:49.240
<v Chair>We don't know from that remark whether the four Yorkshiremen were indeed exaggerating a great deal,

26
00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:51.440
<v Chair>which of course they were about how hard they were working

27
00:01:51.440 --> 00:01:53.540
<v Chair>and the conditions under which they were brought up.

28
00:01:53.800 --> 00:01:56.620
<v Chair>And in fact whether the kids of today do have it any easier.

29
00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:02.600
<v Chair>And there is a question here about how hard we work here in Western industrialised societies.

30
00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:08.320
<v Chair>We know that people outside that of course have it a lot harder than us.

31
00:02:08.780 --> 00:02:11.260
<v Chair>But when we listen to someone like Clive Hamilton,

32
00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:16.740
<v Chair>he talks to us about the disconnect that we have between our material standards of living and our well-being.

33
00:02:16.780 --> 00:02:18.360
<v Chair>We know that work's got a lot to do with that.

34
00:02:18.460 --> 00:02:20.680
<v Chair>We know that we're overworked and overspent.

35
00:02:20.780 --> 00:02:23.660
<v Chair>And so we're going to hear from the panel today about how it got to be this way

36
00:02:23.660 --> 00:02:25.380
<v Chair>and what we might do about it.

37
00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:26.620
<v Chair>So I'm going to introduce...

38
00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:28.420
<v Chair>I'm going to introduce the speakers briefly.

39
00:02:29.200 --> 00:02:32.420
<v Chair>On my immediate left is Susan Mousehart.

40
00:02:32.620 --> 00:02:36.140
<v Chair>She is of course the only reason why one would want to read

41
00:02:36.140 --> 00:02:37.720
<v Chair>The Colour Supplement of the Weekend Australian.

42
00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:45.020
<v Chair>Until I should, as a caveat, until she was very recently bookended by Philip Adams.

43
00:02:46.480 --> 00:02:51.700
<v Chair>And Susan exposes us to the daily struggle of family life and parenting

44
00:02:51.700 --> 00:02:54.540
<v Chair>in her sort of gently witty way.

45
00:02:54.880 --> 00:02:56.340
<v Chair>She's the author of several books.

46
00:02:56.640 --> 00:03:00.380
<v Chair>Most recently Wife Work, which as she puts it quite nicely,

47
00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:01.980
<v Chair>is starting arguments in six languages.

48
00:03:03.480 --> 00:03:07.600
<v Chair>Next to her is Barbara Pocock, who is of course one of our own.

49
00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:12.660
<v Chair>She is an activist and an academic in the labour movement,

50
00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:15.440
<v Chair>particularly in relation to the role of women in work,

51
00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:17.440
<v Chair>and in fact in the labour movement.

52
00:03:17.520 --> 00:03:21.220
<v Chair>She was for some time an advisor to Natasha Stott-Despoja

53
00:03:21.220 --> 00:03:23.940
<v Chair>at a time when the Democrats actually mattered.

54
00:03:24.520 --> 00:03:25.040
<v Chair>LAUGHTER

55
00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:26.620
<v Chair>Most recently...

56
00:03:26.620 --> 00:03:29.260
<v Chair>Most recently she's been unavailable for lunch for well over a year.

57
00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:33.240
<v Chair>And the reasons for that became clearer about a fortnight ago

58
00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:37.300
<v Chair>when her terrific book, The Work-Life Collision, was launched at Imprints.

59
00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:42.040
<v Chair>Sitting next to Barbara is Michael Pusey, who is...

60
00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:45.920
<v Chair>I hope you won't mind me calling him the popular face of sociology in Australia.

61
00:03:46.860 --> 00:03:51.140
<v Chair>It's to Michael that we owe the widespread use of the term economic rationalism.

62
00:03:52.200 --> 00:03:56.260
<v Chair>And this was used by Michael to describe, I think,

63
00:03:56.260 --> 00:03:58.280
<v Chair>what you might call a pervasive frame of reference,

64
00:03:58.420 --> 00:04:01.360
<v Chair>which ran across the public service in Canberra.

65
00:04:01.980 --> 00:04:04.400
<v Chair>And in the end it became somewhat misappropriated

66
00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:08.560
<v Chair>and became a way of describing what are more properly called

67
00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:10.020
<v Chair>neoliberal economic policies,

68
00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:13.960
<v Chair>which I think Michael would probably say are irrational in their consequences.

69
00:04:14.760 --> 00:04:17.680
<v Chair>And he spells it out very nicely in his book

70
00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:21.860
<v Chair>that's also out there in the tent on the experience of middle Australia.

71
00:04:23.780 --> 00:04:25.360
<v Chair>Next to Michael we have Amy Dean,

72
00:04:26.260 --> 00:04:28.640
<v Chair>is the head of the South Bay AFL-CIO,

73
00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:31.160
<v Chair>and that's sort of equivalent for local people

74
00:04:31.160 --> 00:04:34.360
<v Chair>to the role that Janet Giles plays in the United Trades and Labour Council.

75
00:04:35.020 --> 00:04:37.820
<v Chair>But what a place to be heading up a union movement in Silicon Valley.

76
00:04:38.200 --> 00:04:41.520
<v Chair>It's the most individualistic entrepreneurial culture

77
00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:43.460
<v Chair>and it's possibly the least friendly environment

78
00:04:43.460 --> 00:04:46.140
<v Chair>in which one can try to be running a trade union.

79
00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:49.280
<v Chair>But there are still, as Amy reminded us yesterday,

80
00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:50.360
<v Chair>there are still janitors there,

81
00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:52.600
<v Chair>there are still a lot of temporary workers there,

82
00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:55.460
<v Chair>there are still real families who are having to...

83
00:04:55.460 --> 00:04:56.040
<v Chair>...

84
00:04:56.040 --> 00:04:56.240
<v Chair>...

85
00:04:56.260 --> 00:04:56.460
<v Chair>...

86
00:04:56.460 --> 00:04:56.560
<v Chair>...

87
00:04:57.800 --> 00:04:58.320
<v Chair>...

88
00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:01.120
<v Chair>And if you accept the thesis that California is the future,

89
00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:04.080
<v Chair>or at least tells us something about the future,

90
00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:07.160
<v Chair>then we've got a lot to learn from Amy about how we respond to that.

91
00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:10.140
<v Chair>And finally we have George Monbiot.

92
00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:15.920
<v Chair>Anyone who's read the program would know that George has created a new niche

93
00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:19.840
<v Chair>in combining adventure travel with environmental activism.

94
00:05:20.320 --> 00:05:23.800
<v Chair>He's sort of an action hero for Generation Y, I think.

95
00:05:29.540 --> 00:05:32.600
<v Chair>George now spends most of his time in Britain,

96
00:05:32.740 --> 00:05:35.640
<v Chair>where his job is to do his damnedest to annoy the Blair government

97
00:05:35.640 --> 00:05:37.280
<v Chair>and those people in power,

98
00:05:37.380 --> 00:05:39.060
<v Chair>with his weekly column in The Guardian

99
00:05:39.060 --> 00:05:42.540
<v Chair>and in books like Captive State and The Age of Consent.

100
00:05:42.720 --> 00:05:48.240
<v Chair>So each of our speakers is going to speak for around about eight minutes or so,

101
00:05:48.880 --> 00:05:51.940
<v Chair>and then we'll open it up to questions from the floor.

102
00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.140
<v Chair>Please turn off your mobile phones and all those sort of things,

103
00:05:56.260 --> 00:05:56.820
<v Chair>so we're not interrupted.

104
00:05:57.500 --> 00:05:58.520
<v Chair>Over to you, Susan.

105
00:05:59.620 --> 00:06:00.140
<v Chair>...

106
00:06:05.760 --> 00:06:07.160
<v Speaker 2>Thanks for that, Mark.

107
00:06:07.260 --> 00:06:11.820
<v Speaker 2>You know, when I first learned the title of this panel, Hard Labour,

108
00:06:11.980 --> 00:06:14.700
<v Speaker 2>I naturally assumed we'd all be talking about childbirth.

109
00:06:16.780 --> 00:06:21.180
<v Speaker 2>So I've just kind of thrown together something really fast.

110
00:06:21.420 --> 00:06:24.860
<v Speaker 2>I was in transition a minute ago in the back.

111
00:06:26.280 --> 00:06:29.760
<v Speaker 2>Nothing kickstarts a slow news day quite like a front-page story

112
00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:32.800
<v Speaker 2>declaring that feminism is dead again.

113
00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:36.980
<v Speaker 2>One recent variation on the theme under the banner headline

114
00:06:36.980 --> 00:06:39.840
<v Speaker 2>Who Wants Equality? Say Working Mothers

115
00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:44.100
<v Speaker 2>assured us that Australian women not only tolerate unequal treatment,

116
00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:46.360
<v Speaker 2>we positively exalt in it.

117
00:06:47.180 --> 00:06:50.920
<v Speaker 2>Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good obituary as much as the next, Sheila,

118
00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:54.860
<v Speaker 2>but I do find it a bit macabre when it goes into serialization,

119
00:06:54.860 --> 00:06:58.660
<v Speaker 2>which is what happened the next day in an editorial titled

120
00:06:58.660 --> 00:07:02.020
<v Speaker 2>Leave Families to Decide What Works Best.

121
00:07:03.020 --> 00:07:06.420
<v Speaker 2>I'll admit it was hard to refute the argument that paid maternity leave

122
00:07:06.420 --> 00:07:08.980
<v Speaker 2>was now a dead issue again.

123
00:07:09.720 --> 00:07:12.440
<v Speaker 2>After all, if inequality makes women happy,

124
00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:15.500
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't more inequality make us happier still?

125
00:07:16.620 --> 00:07:20.380
<v Speaker 2>Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that these reports of Australian womanhood's

126
00:07:20.380 --> 00:07:24.100
<v Speaker 2>bondage fetish were, like rumors of Mark Twain's death,

127
00:07:24.200 --> 00:07:24.840
<v Speaker 2>greatly exaggerated.

128
00:07:24.860 --> 00:07:30.500
<v Speaker 2>So I did something most journalists consider a breach of professional ethics.

129
00:07:30.860 --> 00:07:32.160
<v Speaker 2>I went to the source.

130
00:07:39.460 --> 00:07:42.860
<v Speaker 2>Turned out that the author of the study that was being reported on

131
00:07:42.860 --> 00:07:46.260
<v Speaker 2>was still stuck in the denial stage of grief, too.

132
00:07:46.620 --> 00:07:50.540
<v Speaker 2>That was Professor Robert Drago at Penn State University.

133
00:07:51.120 --> 00:07:53.760
<v Speaker 2>Drago is a leading work family researcher,

134
00:07:54.020 --> 00:07:54.840
<v Speaker 2>and he was familiar with the issue of gender equality.

135
00:07:54.860 --> 00:07:58.500
<v Speaker 2>He was familiar with the study on which the funeral oration was based

136
00:07:58.500 --> 00:07:59.640
<v Speaker 2>because he had written it,

137
00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:03.420
<v Speaker 2>yet his own interpretation of the data, his data,

138
00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:04.800
<v Speaker 2>could not have been more different.

139
00:08:05.500 --> 00:08:07.440
<v Speaker 2>First of all, and rather disappointingly,

140
00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:09.220
<v Speaker 2>the main finding of Drago's study

141
00:08:09.220 --> 00:08:14.480
<v Speaker 2>was nothing to do with bondage preferences at all,

142
00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:17.300
<v Speaker 2>but the distinctly less sexy news that

143
00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:20.960
<v Speaker 2>across men and women in a variety of family circumstances,

144
00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:24.280
<v Speaker 2>the average employee desires fewer.

145
00:08:31.340 --> 00:08:54.840
<v Speaker 2>The ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio of the ratio

146
00:08:54.840 --> 00:09:00.700
<v Speaker 2>crave. He points out that the highest level of male parenting satisfaction comes from families

147
00:09:00.700 --> 00:09:06.420
<v Speaker 2>in which child care is shared. More on that in a moment. Women, by contrast, continue to buy into

148
00:09:06.420 --> 00:09:13.000
<v Speaker 2>the motherhood norm that tells them that longer paid work hours equal bad or neglectful mothering.

149
00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:18.160
<v Speaker 2>That's what the study was really about. What drives most women to conform to traditional

150
00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:24.500
<v Speaker 2>gender roles, this research tells us, is not our joy about the status quo, it's our guilt

151
00:09:24.500 --> 00:09:30.880
<v Speaker 2>about the alternatives. With economic and social realities as they now stand, of course,

152
00:09:31.420 --> 00:09:35.940
<v Speaker 2>most working mothers are happy for their husbands to be the main breadwinner. For crying out loud,

153
00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:42.720
<v Speaker 2>I feel that way and I'm not even married. Women are still doing twice as much unpaid labor as

154
00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:48.020
<v Speaker 2>their male partners, in addition to an average 75% of the child care and 100% of the wife

155
00:09:48.020 --> 00:09:48.140
<v Speaker 2>work. Women are still doing twice as much unpaid labor as their male partners, in addition

156
00:09:48.140 --> 00:09:50.640
<v Speaker 2>to an average 75% of the child care and 100% of the wife work. Anybody who really wants to add more

157
00:09:50.640 --> 00:09:56.540
<v Speaker 2>paid working hours to that load is welcome to do so, and may I suggest a career as a suicide bomber

158
00:09:56.540 --> 00:10:03.540
<v Speaker 2>girls. There are lots of openings. Women who pursue full-time paid work anyway face a workplace

159
00:10:03.540 --> 00:10:09.540
<v Speaker 2>culture in which motherhood is seen as a sexually transmitted disease, to which all females are

160
00:10:09.540 --> 00:10:15.320
<v Speaker 2>potentially vulnerable. Although women currently comprise 44% of the Australian labor force,

161
00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:18.120
<v Speaker 2>they fill a piddly 8.4% of the workforce.

162
00:10:18.120 --> 00:10:24.860
<v Speaker 2>For my money, that's not exactly the stuff of a national feel-good fest.

163
00:10:25.660 --> 00:10:30.920
<v Speaker 2>To my way of thinking and to Professor Drago's, findings like these suggest that the problem of

164
00:10:30.920 --> 00:10:36.560
<v Speaker 2>gender roles in Australian families needs more attention, not less. If all stakeholders in the

165
00:10:36.560 --> 00:10:42.220
<v Speaker 2>enterprise, women, men, and children alike, are to get what they really want and really deserve

166
00:10:42.220 --> 00:10:48.100
<v Speaker 2>out of family life, we are going to have to do more than report the data. We're going to have to

167
00:10:48.100 --> 00:10:55.140
<v Speaker 2>understand it. Finally, let me say a word about Howard's proposal to make shared custody the

168
00:10:55.140 --> 00:11:04.100
<v Speaker 2>rebuttable presumption after divorce. If the shared care of children were the rebuttable presumption

169
00:11:04.100 --> 00:11:15.960
<v Speaker 2>before divorce, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe we wouldn't even need a family

170
00:11:15.960 --> 00:11:17.720
<v Speaker 2>court. Get real.

171
00:11:17.720 --> 00:11:23.180
<v Speaker 2>Until the day comes in this country when equality of opportunity exists within the workplace, when paid parental

172
00:11:23.180 --> 00:11:29.760
<v Speaker 2>leave is as much a matter of entitlement as paid holiday leave, when the hard labor of creating and sustaining

173
00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:35.800
<v Speaker 2>families is honored and supported instead of being used as a political bargaining chip, well, until that day

174
00:11:35.800 --> 00:11:40.560
<v Speaker 2>comes, Howard can stuff that proposal up his rebuttable presumption.

175
00:11:41.780 --> 00:11:42.620
<v Speaker 3>Thank you.

176
00:11:55.100 --> 00:12:02.420
<v Speaker 4>I want to talk about Australia, but I think it's important to locate hard labor in Australia in its international framework.

177
00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:14.680
<v Speaker 4>We know we live on a globe which has endemic child labor and really extraordinary exploitation on a scale which most of us in Australia don't live.

178
00:12:15.060 --> 00:12:17.700
<v Speaker 4>However, we are in Australia in our hard labor. We are in Australia in our hard labor. We are in Australia in our hard labor.

179
00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:18.240
<v Speaker 4>Australia's labor standards have a lot of

180
00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:25.300
<v Speaker 4>labor located in an international race to the bottom on labor standards, and that is, in many ways,

181
00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:30.340
<v Speaker 4>constructing the kind of hard labor that Australians are doing, and I do want to start by talking

182
00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:37.460
<v Speaker 4>about that other kind of labor, because it is an important part of conditioning why work in Australia

183
00:12:37.460 --> 00:12:44.340
<v Speaker 4>is a hard thing for many people, and that is the procedures and treatment of women when they have a baby.

184
00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:46.680
<v Speaker 4>I was rung by a journalist, just yesterday,

185
00:12:46.900 --> 00:12:47.560
<v Speaker 4>who's

186
00:12:47.560 --> 00:12:51.340
<v Speaker 4>He's writing in tomorrow's Adelaide paper about this issue

187
00:12:51.340 --> 00:12:53.200
<v Speaker 4>and he said, well, what are we meant to do?

188
00:12:53.380 --> 00:12:54.680
<v Speaker 4>What are we going to do about this stuff?

189
00:12:54.860 --> 00:12:56.500
<v Speaker 4>And I said, well, we could give women a rest

190
00:12:56.500 --> 00:12:57.620
<v Speaker 4>when they push out a baby.

191
00:12:58.020 --> 00:12:58.720
<v Speaker 4>That'd be good.

192
00:12:58.880 --> 00:13:00.280
<v Speaker 4>And he said, but we've done that.

193
00:13:00.460 --> 00:13:02.920
<v Speaker 4>There was a story last year about that issue.

194
00:13:02.940 --> 00:13:04.460
<v Speaker 4>We did that thing, didn't we?

195
00:13:04.520 --> 00:13:06.420
<v Speaker 4>I mean, the Prime Minister said it was a good idea.

196
00:13:06.680 --> 00:13:10.840
<v Speaker 4>I think in Australia we've had so much discussion about it,

197
00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:13.760
<v Speaker 4>as Susan has said, and so little action

198
00:13:13.760 --> 00:13:15.040
<v Speaker 4>that some people are confused.

199
00:13:15.040 --> 00:13:15.480
<v Speaker 4>Confused.

200
00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:18.000
<v Speaker 4>They think paid maternity leave is a good idea.

201
00:13:18.080 --> 00:13:19.280
<v Speaker 4>Yes, it is a good idea.

202
00:13:19.320 --> 00:13:20.860
<v Speaker 4>It was a good idea in 1911

203
00:13:20.860 --> 00:13:22.440
<v Speaker 4>when the International Labour Organisation

204
00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:24.840
<v Speaker 4>told all countries in the world that were signatories

205
00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:26.740
<v Speaker 4>that it was a standard we should aspire to.

206
00:13:27.040 --> 00:13:29.820
<v Speaker 4>Two-thirds of Australian women are still today waiting.

207
00:13:30.460 --> 00:13:32.980
<v Speaker 4>There are many arguments that are posed

208
00:13:32.980 --> 00:13:34.740
<v Speaker 4>against paid maternity leave.

209
00:13:34.920 --> 00:13:36.900
<v Speaker 4>One that I have a lot of sympathy for

210
00:13:36.900 --> 00:13:38.900
<v Speaker 4>is that there are many other more important

211
00:13:38.900 --> 00:13:40.360
<v Speaker 4>and important things we should do.

212
00:13:40.540 --> 00:13:41.480
<v Speaker 4>There are.

213
00:13:41.680 --> 00:13:44.120
<v Speaker 4>There are many things we need to do in our labour market.

214
00:13:44.120 --> 00:13:47.680
<v Speaker 4>We had our first case yesterday of a charge of slavery

215
00:13:47.680 --> 00:13:50.140
<v Speaker 4>for the first time in Australia under federal law

216
00:13:50.140 --> 00:13:52.720
<v Speaker 4>in the sex industry in Melbourne.

217
00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:55.680
<v Speaker 4>We are going to see an increasing integration

218
00:13:55.680 --> 00:13:57.580
<v Speaker 4>of the Australian labour market

219
00:13:57.580 --> 00:14:00.540
<v Speaker 4>into the international trade in bodies and sex,

220
00:14:00.680 --> 00:14:02.420
<v Speaker 4>which includes, of course, the trade of children.

221
00:14:03.200 --> 00:14:04.740
<v Speaker 4>And we are contaminated

222
00:14:04.740 --> 00:14:08.380
<v Speaker 4>by this extraordinary growing form of labour.

223
00:14:08.840 --> 00:14:11.620
<v Speaker 4>But we do need to deal with the practical questions

224
00:14:11.620 --> 00:14:14.100
<v Speaker 4>which we are so far behind in Australia.

225
00:14:14.120 --> 00:14:16.180
<v Speaker 4>And paid maternity is one of these.

226
00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:19.280
<v Speaker 4>Two-thirds of women don't have it.

227
00:14:19.320 --> 00:14:20.600
<v Speaker 4>My grandmother didn't have it.

228
00:14:20.660 --> 00:14:22.840
<v Speaker 4>None of our grandmothers had it in all probability.

229
00:14:23.300 --> 00:14:25.400
<v Speaker 4>But at the time of those generations,

230
00:14:25.800 --> 00:14:27.360
<v Speaker 4>two, three generations ago,

231
00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:31.140
<v Speaker 4>there weren't 70% of women of childbearing age

232
00:14:31.140 --> 00:14:33.020
<v Speaker 4>trying to hold down a job

233
00:14:33.020 --> 00:14:36.100
<v Speaker 4>at the moment it came for them to have their first child.

234
00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:37.960
<v Speaker 4>So I think paid maternity leave,

235
00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.400
<v Speaker 4>if we're in practical mode here,

236
00:14:40.500 --> 00:14:43.060
<v Speaker 4>is long overdue and simply a remedial measure

237
00:14:43.060 --> 00:14:44.100
<v Speaker 4>in the long term.

238
00:14:44.120 --> 00:14:45.780
<v Speaker 4>I think we have a long agenda

239
00:14:45.780 --> 00:14:48.860
<v Speaker 4>on improving the terms of labour in Australia.

240
00:14:49.680 --> 00:14:51.880
<v Speaker 4>I think on the more positive side,

241
00:14:52.100 --> 00:14:55.700
<v Speaker 4>we're in a country which has an international leadership role

242
00:14:55.700 --> 00:14:57.500
<v Speaker 4>on things like long service leave.

243
00:14:57.620 --> 00:14:58.720
<v Speaker 4>After 10 years in Australia,

244
00:14:58.740 --> 00:15:00.440
<v Speaker 4>if you've managed to hold down a job with continuity,

245
00:15:00.820 --> 00:15:02.200
<v Speaker 4>you get a good lie down.

246
00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:04.220
<v Speaker 4>13 weeks, in fact.

247
00:15:04.700 --> 00:15:08.040
<v Speaker 4>Way better than the maternity standard of six weeks

248
00:15:08.040 --> 00:15:10.560
<v Speaker 4>for most women who happen to luck in to paid maternity leave.

249
00:15:10.680 --> 00:15:13.560
<v Speaker 4>I think we should be building on our fantastic record

250
00:15:13.560 --> 00:15:14.840
<v Speaker 4>on long service leave

251
00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:18.440
<v Speaker 4>to improve the flexibility for so many workers

252
00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:19.380
<v Speaker 4>in our labour market

253
00:15:19.380 --> 00:15:21.200
<v Speaker 4>who want the opportunity to change jobs

254
00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:23.400
<v Speaker 4>without putting their labour market status at risk,

255
00:15:23.560 --> 00:15:24.760
<v Speaker 4>want to care for a child

256
00:15:24.760 --> 00:15:26.260
<v Speaker 4>and be able to return to the labour market

257
00:15:26.260 --> 00:15:27.340
<v Speaker 4>without becoming casual

258
00:15:27.340 --> 00:15:30.300
<v Speaker 4>or giving up all of their rights to employment security.

259
00:15:31.400 --> 00:15:33.960
<v Speaker 4>These are very important issues

260
00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:36.120
<v Speaker 4>that Australians need to build on

261
00:15:36.120 --> 00:15:38.480
<v Speaker 4>and long service leave is a wonderful Australian institution

262
00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:39.700
<v Speaker 4>that we need to extend.

263
00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:43.480
<v Speaker 4>Unfortunately, alongside the notion of four weeks,

264
00:15:43.560 --> 00:15:46.320
<v Speaker 4>holiday and two weeks sick leave,

265
00:15:46.380 --> 00:15:49.420
<v Speaker 4>these are rights which are luxuries,

266
00:15:49.420 --> 00:15:50.560
<v Speaker 4>to use Mark's term,

267
00:15:50.760 --> 00:15:53.640
<v Speaker 4>for one in four Australian workers now who are casual.

268
00:15:53.780 --> 00:15:54.740
<v Speaker 4>Many of them young people

269
00:15:54.740 --> 00:15:56.440
<v Speaker 4>but the great proportion of them women.

270
00:15:56.660 --> 00:15:59.500
<v Speaker 4>So actually gone backwards in the last 30 years

271
00:15:59.500 --> 00:16:01.180
<v Speaker 4>in terms of the right to arrest

272
00:16:01.180 --> 00:16:04.040
<v Speaker 4>and the right to be paid on a day when you're sick.

273
00:16:04.280 --> 00:16:06.560
<v Speaker 4>This is another really important thing that I think

274
00:16:06.560 --> 00:16:08.460
<v Speaker 4>if we want to improve the terms of labour in Australia,

275
00:16:08.660 --> 00:16:09.820
<v Speaker 4>we need to do more on.

276
00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:11.240
<v Speaker 4>Talk less, take action.

277
00:16:11.920 --> 00:16:13.480
<v Speaker 4>The hours issue in Australia,

278
00:16:13.560 --> 00:16:14.480
<v Speaker 4>is also very important.

279
00:16:14.580 --> 00:16:16.740
<v Speaker 4>I saw a wonderful example of the kind of study

280
00:16:16.740 --> 00:16:17.580
<v Speaker 4>Susan's talking about.

281
00:16:17.640 --> 00:16:19.140
<v Speaker 4>I think it was only the day before yesterday.

282
00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:21.820
<v Speaker 4>One in four Australian long hours workers

283
00:16:21.820 --> 00:16:23.180
<v Speaker 4>don't hate their hours.

284
00:16:23.220 --> 00:16:24.080
<v Speaker 4>They like their job.

285
00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:24.860
<v Speaker 4>That was the headline.

286
00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:30.240
<v Speaker 4>The missing piece is three in four don't like it.

287
00:16:30.380 --> 00:16:31.220
<v Speaker 4>You know, I mean,

288
00:16:32.100 --> 00:16:33.980
<v Speaker 4>how do you get that kind of headline

289
00:16:33.980 --> 00:16:35.060
<v Speaker 4>out of a piece of research?

290
00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:36.380
<v Speaker 4>I just don't understand.

291
00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:39.380
<v Speaker 4>75% of people don't like it.

292
00:16:40.020 --> 00:16:41.900
<v Speaker 4>And there's a real lot of evidence

293
00:16:41.900 --> 00:16:43.160
<v Speaker 4>that long hours,

294
00:16:43.560 --> 00:16:45.740
<v Speaker 4>are causing a very, very serious problem

295
00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:47.560
<v Speaker 4>for the many men, mostly,

296
00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:48.440
<v Speaker 4>the majority,

297
00:16:48.780 --> 00:16:49.820
<v Speaker 4>who work them,

298
00:16:49.940 --> 00:16:52.140
<v Speaker 4>and the many men who work alongside

299
00:16:52.140 --> 00:16:53.480
<v Speaker 4>those long hours workers,

300
00:16:53.640 --> 00:16:55.560
<v Speaker 4>and the women who increasingly join them,

301
00:16:55.620 --> 00:16:57.580
<v Speaker 4>because of the rising bar of expectation

302
00:16:58.140 --> 00:16:59.020
<v Speaker 4>of workers,

303
00:16:59.280 --> 00:17:01.560
<v Speaker 4>who face competition

304
00:17:01.560 --> 00:17:03.000
<v Speaker 4>with the long hours worker,

305
00:17:03.100 --> 00:17:04.840
<v Speaker 4>even if they refuse to work themselves.

306
00:17:05.480 --> 00:17:06.740
<v Speaker 4>And of course, in Australia,

307
00:17:06.820 --> 00:17:09.700
<v Speaker 4>we have, alongside the fabulous term

308
00:17:09.700 --> 00:17:10.820
<v Speaker 4>of a permanent casual,

309
00:17:11.120 --> 00:17:13.540
<v Speaker 4>we have the notion of unpaid over-due,

310
00:17:13.560 --> 00:17:16.080
<v Speaker 4>the majority of long hours worked in Australia

311
00:17:16.080 --> 00:17:16.940
<v Speaker 4>in terms of overtime,

312
00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:18.660
<v Speaker 4>is simply unpaid.

313
00:17:18.820 --> 00:17:19.800
<v Speaker 4>It is labour theft.

314
00:17:20.780 --> 00:17:22.600
<v Speaker 4>The final issue I want to mention

315
00:17:22.600 --> 00:17:29.180
<v Speaker 4>is the question of care.

316
00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:33.000
<v Speaker 4>And the way in which we care for ourselves

317
00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:35.040
<v Speaker 4>and our communities, our families,

318
00:17:35.060 --> 00:17:36.240
<v Speaker 4>and ourselves at present.

319
00:17:36.340 --> 00:17:37.580
<v Speaker 4>I recently had that experience

320
00:17:37.580 --> 00:17:39.200
<v Speaker 4>of hanging out in federal parliament

321
00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:40.140
<v Speaker 4>for 14 months.

322
00:17:40.820 --> 00:17:43.180
<v Speaker 4>And there was a dark period,

323
00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:43.540
<v Speaker 4>which is,

324
00:17:43.540 --> 00:17:44.340
<v Speaker 4>which is continuing, of course,

325
00:17:44.340 --> 00:17:45.000
<v Speaker 4>in our federal parliament.

326
00:17:45.060 --> 00:17:46.580
<v Speaker 4>But I came away with a sense of parliament,

327
00:17:46.820 --> 00:17:47.860
<v Speaker 4>which is a building,

328
00:17:47.940 --> 00:17:48.760
<v Speaker 4>as many of you will know,

329
00:17:48.920 --> 00:17:51.460
<v Speaker 4>which has a significant number of floors underground.

330
00:17:52.380 --> 00:17:53.800
<v Speaker 4>People who work in parliament,

331
00:17:53.900 --> 00:17:54.580
<v Speaker 4>by and large,

332
00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:55.660
<v Speaker 4>if they are decision makers

333
00:17:55.660 --> 00:17:57.400
<v Speaker 4>sitting on the red or green leather,

334
00:17:57.560 --> 00:17:59.080
<v Speaker 4>are people without care.

335
00:17:59.700 --> 00:18:00.960
<v Speaker 4>Somebody makes their bed,

336
00:18:01.120 --> 00:18:02.100
<v Speaker 4>their sandwich.

337
00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:03.940
<v Speaker 4>Someone's looking after their child,

338
00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:06.280
<v Speaker 4>often in a place very distant from Canberra.

339
00:18:06.420 --> 00:18:09.420
<v Speaker 4>And their entire social, physical reproduction

340
00:18:09.420 --> 00:18:12.180
<v Speaker 4>is undertaken some distance from their selves.

341
00:18:12.300 --> 00:18:13.440
<v Speaker 4>And it is no coincidence

342
00:18:13.440 --> 00:18:16.080
<v Speaker 4>that our care regime in Australia,

343
00:18:16.380 --> 00:18:17.840
<v Speaker 4>shaped by such people,

344
00:18:18.060 --> 00:18:19.460
<v Speaker 4>is entirely perverted

345
00:18:19.460 --> 00:18:21.020
<v Speaker 4>in its underestimation

346
00:18:21.020 --> 00:18:23.260
<v Speaker 4>of the significance and importance of care.

347
00:18:23.540 --> 00:18:25.900
<v Speaker 4>We would not have an economy as we do,

348
00:18:26.100 --> 00:18:27.320
<v Speaker 4>economic rationalists,

349
00:18:27.320 --> 00:18:28.300
<v Speaker 4>in its shape,

350
00:18:28.320 --> 00:18:30.520
<v Speaker 4>if Adam Smith had been a mother.

351
00:18:31.080 --> 00:18:34.760
<v Speaker 4>If the economists who shape the frame in which we live

352
00:18:34.760 --> 00:18:37.200
<v Speaker 4>truly valued the care which is so essential

353
00:18:37.200 --> 00:18:39.200
<v Speaker 4>to any one of us being here in this room,

354
00:18:39.340 --> 00:18:40.880
<v Speaker 4>being reproduced in the first place,

355
00:18:41.020 --> 00:18:43.420
<v Speaker 4>but then maintained and hopefully reproduced

356
00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:44.260
<v Speaker 4>into the future.

357
00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:46.740
<v Speaker 4>So I'm strongly of the view

358
00:18:46.740 --> 00:18:48.800
<v Speaker 4>that if we are going to change the terms of labour

359
00:18:48.800 --> 00:18:50.680
<v Speaker 4>in ways in Australia and internationally

360
00:18:50.680 --> 00:18:53.840
<v Speaker 4>that really make sense for us to live well,

361
00:18:53.960 --> 00:18:56.780
<v Speaker 4>then we need to revalue the whole notion of care

362
00:18:56.780 --> 00:18:58.240
<v Speaker 4>and reproduction of ourselves.

363
00:18:58.660 --> 00:18:59.240
<v Speaker 4>Thank you.

364
00:19:00.460 --> 00:19:00.960
<v Speaker 4>.

365
00:19:09.760 --> 00:19:12.060
<v Speaker 5>I had some notes written for this,

366
00:19:12.080 --> 00:19:13.420
<v Speaker 5>but I had no idea

367
00:19:13.440 --> 00:19:14.060
<v Speaker 5>that I was going to tear them up,

368
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:16.540
<v Speaker 5>because at the reception on Thursday,

369
00:19:16.760 --> 00:19:19.200
<v Speaker 5>I asked Mark what hard labour,

370
00:19:19.280 --> 00:19:20.320
<v Speaker 5>what the topic was about,

371
00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:21.720
<v Speaker 5>and he looked at me and he said,

372
00:19:21.800 --> 00:19:23.660
<v Speaker 5>well, why is labour hard?

373
00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:25.800
<v Speaker 5>I thought, oh, that's what it means.

374
00:19:26.560 --> 00:19:28.240
<v Speaker 5>So I've written some more,

375
00:19:28.360 --> 00:19:31.020
<v Speaker 5>and I'm hopefully answering his question.

376
00:19:32.340 --> 00:19:35.900
<v Speaker 5>Why is work so hard in a time

377
00:19:35.900 --> 00:19:40.400
<v Speaker 5>when we've been released from the physical pains of work

378
00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:42.440
<v Speaker 5>by technological transformations?

379
00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:45.280
<v Speaker 5>And why is labour hard

380
00:19:45.280 --> 00:19:48.620
<v Speaker 5>when people are earning incomes

381
00:19:48.620 --> 00:19:51.280
<v Speaker 5>which would make their grandparents blush?

382
00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:57.440
<v Speaker 5>Well, work strangely, mysteriously,

383
00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:01.180
<v Speaker 5>is hard and perhaps getting harder.

384
00:20:01.320 --> 00:20:02.840
<v Speaker 5>I think getting harder,

385
00:20:02.960 --> 00:20:05.020
<v Speaker 5>even in an age of affluence.

386
00:20:05.260 --> 00:20:08.460
<v Speaker 5>And I want to make comments that come in...

387
00:20:08.460 --> 00:20:09.780
<v Speaker 5>There are four steps to it.

388
00:20:09.880 --> 00:20:10.860
<v Speaker 5>Why is it hard?

389
00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:12.320
<v Speaker 5>Why is it harder?

390
00:20:12.320 --> 00:20:14.140
<v Speaker 5>Why is it harder still?

391
00:20:15.260 --> 00:20:17.720
<v Speaker 5>And is there a bit of it that's impossible?

392
00:20:18.760 --> 00:20:20.040
<v Speaker 5>Now, hard.

393
00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:22.600
<v Speaker 5>This is the material element of the story,

394
00:20:22.700 --> 00:20:24.040
<v Speaker 5>which is pretty clear.

395
00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:26.740
<v Speaker 5>Seemingly so.

396
00:20:26.900 --> 00:20:30.620
<v Speaker 5>About 62% of the population depend directly

397
00:20:30.620 --> 00:20:34.040
<v Speaker 5>for their livelihood on wages and salaries.

398
00:20:35.160 --> 00:20:37.280
<v Speaker 5>Now, wages might be up,

399
00:20:37.360 --> 00:20:38.700
<v Speaker 5>but as you know,

400
00:20:38.800 --> 00:20:41.220
<v Speaker 5>about 30% of the jobs are casual

401
00:20:41.220 --> 00:20:42.500
<v Speaker 5>and could disappear overnight.

402
00:20:43.720 --> 00:20:45.640
<v Speaker 5>But there's more to it than that, even.

403
00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:49.480
<v Speaker 5>That you probably don't get into a full-time job

404
00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:51.440
<v Speaker 5>until you're about 27 or 28,

405
00:20:51.780 --> 00:20:53.660
<v Speaker 5>and so you have to support your kids

406
00:20:53.660 --> 00:20:55.480
<v Speaker 5>until they're 27 or 28,

407
00:20:55.620 --> 00:20:57.860
<v Speaker 5>until they get into the full-time labour market.

408
00:20:58.000 --> 00:20:58.620
<v Speaker 5>And then, of course,

409
00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:00.840
<v Speaker 5>there's the good news story at the end, isn't there?

410
00:21:00.900 --> 00:21:02.360
<v Speaker 5>You're going to live till you're 80.

411
00:21:02.540 --> 00:21:03.620
<v Speaker 5>Ah, but the bad news,

412
00:21:03.740 --> 00:21:05.520
<v Speaker 5>you're going to get pushed out when you're 55.

413
00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:09.780
<v Speaker 5>So where's the income going to come for your retirement?

414
00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:11.200
<v Speaker 5>Now, in the end,

415
00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:13.520
<v Speaker 5>it might be OK if you could use

416
00:21:13.520 --> 00:21:16.520
<v Speaker 5>these wonderfully large and ample salaries

417
00:21:16.520 --> 00:21:18.580
<v Speaker 5>to smooth that income over time

418
00:21:18.580 --> 00:21:21.100
<v Speaker 5>from the fat lean years to the lean years,

419
00:21:21.220 --> 00:21:22.600
<v Speaker 5>but you can't, can you?

420
00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:27.620
<v Speaker 5>So you go into debt in order to try to smooth out the bumps,

421
00:21:27.800 --> 00:21:29.060
<v Speaker 5>and that doesn't work either.

422
00:21:29.420 --> 00:21:32.620
<v Speaker 5>And so no wonder that you look

423
00:21:32.620 --> 00:21:36.140
<v Speaker 5>from what is a position that is affluent

424
00:21:36.140 --> 00:21:38.240
<v Speaker 5>compared with that of your grandparents,

425
00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:39.500
<v Speaker 5>and you say now,

426
00:21:39.760 --> 00:21:41.040
<v Speaker 5>ah, can I...

427
00:21:41.040 --> 00:21:43.800
<v Speaker 5>suddenly will my children be able to afford a house?

428
00:21:44.180 --> 00:21:44.780
<v Speaker 5>Not...

429
00:21:44.780 --> 00:21:49.340
<v Speaker 5>It's far less likely that they will be able to than I could.

430
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:52.600
<v Speaker 5>Will they be able to afford quality health care?

431
00:21:52.680 --> 00:21:53.600
<v Speaker 5>Well, perhaps not.

432
00:21:53.800 --> 00:21:59.780
<v Speaker 5>So the income won't stretch over all the uncertainties

433
00:22:00.580 --> 00:22:04.680
<v Speaker 5>and the number of demands that are made on it,

434
00:22:04.700 --> 00:22:06.300
<v Speaker 5>and the income to boot

435
00:22:06.300 --> 00:22:08.860
<v Speaker 5>is more insecure than it was a generation ago.

436
00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:10.700
<v Speaker 5>Now, next step, harder.

437
00:22:14.160 --> 00:22:21.300
<v Speaker 5>The workplace is where you have to fight hardest

438
00:22:22.040 --> 00:22:25.180
<v Speaker 5>for other people's recognition of who you are.

439
00:22:25.420 --> 00:22:29.040
<v Speaker 5>Forget about families and intimates.

440
00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:31.740
<v Speaker 5>Relationships with intimates can go wrong.

441
00:22:32.300 --> 00:22:34.600
<v Speaker 5>Relationships with friends can go wrong.

442
00:22:34.940 --> 00:22:38.300
<v Speaker 5>But you're already in a relationship with them.

443
00:22:38.540 --> 00:22:40.780
<v Speaker 5>But what's distinctive about the workplace?

444
00:22:40.780 --> 00:22:44.160
<v Speaker 5>It's where you have to struggle

445
00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:52.280
<v Speaker 5>for the esteem of people who don't care about you

446
00:22:52.280 --> 00:22:53.960
<v Speaker 5>or need to care about you

447
00:22:53.960 --> 00:22:57.940
<v Speaker 5>or have any commitment to you.

448
00:22:58.520 --> 00:23:02.620
<v Speaker 5>Now, we've always talked about the dignity of labour

449
00:23:02.620 --> 00:23:03.960
<v Speaker 5>because we've always understood

450
00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:06.980
<v Speaker 5>that that was an essential protein for identity

451
00:23:06.980 --> 00:23:09.800
<v Speaker 5>and something we always needed,

452
00:23:09.800 --> 00:23:12.840
<v Speaker 5>the recognition of other people who care nothing for us.

453
00:23:13.500 --> 00:23:15.640
<v Speaker 5>But why should that be harder now?

454
00:23:16.580 --> 00:23:22.040
<v Speaker 5>Well, because the scripts, if you like,

455
00:23:23.140 --> 00:23:25.880
<v Speaker 5>for what it means to be a carpenter,

456
00:23:25.960 --> 00:23:27.660
<v Speaker 5>what it means to be an accountant,

457
00:23:27.960 --> 00:23:30.040
<v Speaker 5>were well written a generation ago.

458
00:23:30.200 --> 00:23:31.500
<v Speaker 5>So that carried the load.

459
00:23:31.920 --> 00:23:33.560
<v Speaker 5>So you were a carpenter.

460
00:23:33.640 --> 00:23:36.020
<v Speaker 5>That meant you had a rip saw and a crosscut saw

461
00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:39.700
<v Speaker 5>and people knew what that was.

462
00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:43.060
<v Speaker 5>So half of the job of conferring value upon you

463
00:23:43.060 --> 00:23:46.360
<v Speaker 5>for what you do was already taken care of.

464
00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:47.460
<v Speaker 5>They just read it off.

465
00:23:48.120 --> 00:23:53.420
<v Speaker 5>But now, the carpenter might be an odd job man with a van.

466
00:23:53.660 --> 00:23:57.380
<v Speaker 5>He might be self-employed doing fix-it jobs.

467
00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:00.420
<v Speaker 5>He might be a moonlight builder without a licence.

468
00:24:00.740 --> 00:24:03.820
<v Speaker 5>He might not be an accountant, a carpenter anymore.

469
00:24:03.940 --> 00:24:05.340
<v Speaker 5>He might be something else.

470
00:24:05.520 --> 00:24:08.060
<v Speaker 5>And so it is with just about every other occupation.

471
00:24:08.180 --> 00:24:09.680
<v Speaker 5>So the story is,

472
00:24:09.680 --> 00:24:10.540
<v Speaker 5>the script isn't written,

473
00:24:10.660 --> 00:24:13.120
<v Speaker 5>so you have to, in a sense,

474
00:24:13.160 --> 00:24:14.680
<v Speaker 5>win this from other people,

475
00:24:14.720 --> 00:24:16.900
<v Speaker 5>a recognition of what it is that you do in your work.

476
00:24:16.960 --> 00:24:18.360
<v Speaker 5>You have to define it for them.

477
00:24:18.480 --> 00:24:21.220
<v Speaker 5>You have to give them the reference which they need

478
00:24:21.220 --> 00:24:23.700
<v Speaker 5>in order to give you the respect

479
00:24:23.700 --> 00:24:25.700
<v Speaker 5>and the recognition which you need

480
00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:27.580
<v Speaker 5>as a person who does work.

481
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:31.400
<v Speaker 5>Now, harder still.

482
00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:35.660
<v Speaker 5>Well, in this new deregulated labour market

483
00:24:35.660 --> 00:24:37.680
<v Speaker 5>in which everybody is nauseating,

484
00:24:37.780 --> 00:24:38.840
<v Speaker 5>they tell you all the time,

485
00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:40.000
<v Speaker 5>you've got to reinvent yourself

486
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:42.920
<v Speaker 5>and you're going to have 11 jobs or 12 jobs in a lifetime.

487
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:44.580
<v Speaker 5>Oh dear, dear, dear.

488
00:24:44.760 --> 00:24:47.200
<v Speaker 5>But part of it's true.

489
00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:52.940
<v Speaker 5>And so what does this say about you as a person who does work?

490
00:24:53.260 --> 00:24:54.840
<v Speaker 5>Well, it means that you're

491
00:24:56.500 --> 00:24:59.800
<v Speaker 5>the producer-designer of your own work identity.

492
00:25:00.800 --> 00:25:02.860
<v Speaker 5>So now, all of a sudden,

493
00:25:02.980 --> 00:25:05.820
<v Speaker 5>you have to commodify your identity.

494
00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:08.400
<v Speaker 5>You have to fabricate who you are

495
00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:10.200
<v Speaker 5>from out of these elusive scripts

496
00:25:10.200 --> 00:25:12.880
<v Speaker 5>that sort of come out of the air through the media,

497
00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:14.380
<v Speaker 5>gone here, gone tomorrow.

498
00:25:14.460 --> 00:25:18.580
<v Speaker 5>You have to persuade people who care about you not at all

499
00:25:19.400 --> 00:25:22.860
<v Speaker 5>to believe this invention of yourself,

500
00:25:23.300 --> 00:25:25.680
<v Speaker 5>almost a virtual work self,

501
00:25:25.840 --> 00:25:28.440
<v Speaker 5>that you have to contrive according to fashions

502
00:25:28.440 --> 00:25:30.780
<v Speaker 5>that change and move all the time.

503
00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:35.400
<v Speaker 5>Now, that puts a huge burden on you

504
00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:38.300
<v Speaker 5>to perform yourself as the new trendy language.

505
00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:44.280
<v Speaker 5>You have to be a virtuoso in using words,

506
00:25:44.380 --> 00:25:45.540
<v Speaker 5>conjuring up images,

507
00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:48.720
<v Speaker 5>evoking the value of things which you do.

508
00:25:49.720 --> 00:25:53.500
<v Speaker 5>Well, trendy, self-actualising, middle-class people

509
00:25:53.500 --> 00:25:56.640
<v Speaker 5>with shallow identities might be bloody good at it,

510
00:25:56.680 --> 00:25:59.700
<v Speaker 5>but for most of us, it's pretty hard.

511
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:01.020
<v Speaker 5>It's pretty hard.

512
00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:08.280
<v Speaker 5>Now, to get to the bit,

513
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:09.280
<v Speaker 5>which is impossible,

514
00:26:14.420 --> 00:26:17.360
<v Speaker 5>the bit which just can't be done,

515
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:20.840
<v Speaker 5>but you're responsible for doing something

516
00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:23.260
<v Speaker 5>which you can't possibly do.

517
00:26:23.640 --> 00:26:24.720
<v Speaker 5>And what's that?

518
00:26:25.080 --> 00:26:26.980
<v Speaker 5>You've got to define yourself

519
00:26:26.980 --> 00:26:29.180
<v Speaker 5>as a person who does work

520
00:26:29.180 --> 00:26:34.460
<v Speaker 5>as an infinitely reducible input cost

521
00:26:34.460 --> 00:26:35.760
<v Speaker 5>to the labour process.

522
00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:39.640
<v Speaker 5>You've got to think of your,

523
00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:43.200
<v Speaker 5>of what you earn as a dollar lost to profits

524
00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:44.520
<v Speaker 5>or to CEO salaries.

525
00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:53.800
<v Speaker 5>And you have to project this forward on a continuum

526
00:26:53.800 --> 00:26:55.980
<v Speaker 5>which goes to zero or minus,

527
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:00.960
<v Speaker 5>so that the labour market can be healthier and healthier

528
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:02.380
<v Speaker 5>and more efficient still.

529
00:27:03.400 --> 00:27:04.640
<v Speaker 5>And that's impossible.

530
00:27:05.040 --> 00:27:05.640
<v Speaker 5>Thank you.

531
00:27:09.540 --> 00:27:09.980
<v Speaker 5>APPLAUSE

532
00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:17.880
<v Speaker 6>Good afternoon.

533
00:27:18.980 --> 00:27:20.780
<v Speaker 6>I'd like to do three things really briefly.

534
00:27:21.020 --> 00:27:23.480
<v Speaker 6>I want to first discuss quickly

535
00:27:23.960 --> 00:27:26.120
<v Speaker 6>some of the forces that are going on in the economy

536
00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:29.480
<v Speaker 6>and how those forces are redefining the way we work.

537
00:27:30.020 --> 00:27:32.580
<v Speaker 6>The second thing I want to talk about are the implications

538
00:27:32.580 --> 00:27:34.900
<v Speaker 6>some of these forces are having on working families.

539
00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:37.120
<v Speaker 6>And then given these kinds of changes,

540
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:38.380
<v Speaker 6>I want to talk about what the implications are.

541
00:27:38.380 --> 00:27:41.860
<v Speaker 6>For institutions like labour, government and employment.

542
00:27:42.040 --> 00:27:43.240
<v Speaker 6>And I promise I'm going to do that all quickly.

543
00:27:44.360 --> 00:27:47.820
<v Speaker 6>The context I want to use to sort of set the conversation

544
00:27:47.820 --> 00:27:51.360
<v Speaker 6>that I want to have is one that's just a little bit personal.

545
00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:52.580
<v Speaker 6>It tells you a little bit about my background.

546
00:27:53.220 --> 00:27:55.020
<v Speaker 6>For the last decade and a half,

547
00:27:55.140 --> 00:27:58.360
<v Speaker 6>my family and I have lived, worked, worshipped

548
00:27:58.360 --> 00:28:00.120
<v Speaker 6>in the Silicon Valley region in California.

549
00:28:01.180 --> 00:28:02.700
<v Speaker 6>In the last 15 years,

550
00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:06.020
<v Speaker 6>we've watched the economy there change in three fundamental ways.

551
00:28:06.280 --> 00:28:08.260
<v Speaker 6>We've seen the defence industry decline.

552
00:28:08.980 --> 00:28:11.940
<v Speaker 6>We've seen the rise and decline of the semiconductor industry.

553
00:28:12.340 --> 00:28:14.860
<v Speaker 6>And now, within this last decade and a half,

554
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:17.400
<v Speaker 6>we live in an industry that's a valley

555
00:28:17.400 --> 00:28:19.200
<v Speaker 6>that's pretty much based on employment

556
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:21.320
<v Speaker 6>in the internet and software industry.

557
00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:25.880
<v Speaker 6>Now, normally, that extent to which those kinds of changes

558
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:27.980
<v Speaker 6>would take place would happen over decades of time.

559
00:28:28.260 --> 00:28:29.940
<v Speaker 6>But they've happened in our region

560
00:28:29.940 --> 00:28:31.360
<v Speaker 6>within the last decade and a half.

561
00:28:32.040 --> 00:28:34.180
<v Speaker 6>The problems that working families confront

562
00:28:34.180 --> 00:28:36.160
<v Speaker 6>in the Silicon Valley region aren't so much

563
00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:37.680
<v Speaker 6>a function of economic decline,

564
00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:39.600
<v Speaker 6>but rather rapid growth and expansion.

565
00:28:40.840 --> 00:28:43.360
<v Speaker 6>Now, if this were just some aberration in the Silicon Valley,

566
00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:44.780
<v Speaker 6>I wouldn't waste your time.

567
00:28:44.860 --> 00:28:46.240
<v Speaker 6>I wouldn't come to Australia and say,

568
00:28:46.280 --> 00:28:48.260
<v Speaker 6>that's interesting, we all got to deal with it and figure it out.

569
00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:50.020
<v Speaker 6>But it's not an aberration.

570
00:28:50.400 --> 00:28:52.520
<v Speaker 6>What goes on in Silicon Valley in particular,

571
00:28:52.820 --> 00:28:54.540
<v Speaker 6>in California in general,

572
00:28:54.740 --> 00:28:56.660
<v Speaker 6>is not just confined to that region.

573
00:28:57.140 --> 00:29:00.160
<v Speaker 6>And it's not just confined to the information technology industries.

574
00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:05.360
<v Speaker 6>What people often mistake when they come to Silicon Valley,

575
00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:07.320
<v Speaker 6>lots of folks from around the world come to study

576
00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:09.440
<v Speaker 6>the region and study industries there.

577
00:29:09.660 --> 00:29:12.380
<v Speaker 6>And what they often fail to understand is that

578
00:29:12.380 --> 00:29:15.100
<v Speaker 6>Silicon Valley is about far more than just new products

579
00:29:15.100 --> 00:29:16.040
<v Speaker 6>and new technologies.

580
00:29:16.380 --> 00:29:18.060
<v Speaker 6>It's really about a new business model

581
00:29:18.060 --> 00:29:19.440
<v Speaker 6>that's fueling the global economy.

582
00:29:19.820 --> 00:29:22.400
<v Speaker 6>It's about production processes that are created

583
00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:25.160
<v Speaker 6>within many of these firms that are exported across the world.

584
00:29:25.460 --> 00:29:28.380
<v Speaker 6>And they're having huge implications for working people.

585
00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:31.760
<v Speaker 6>Now, in 1995, after a year and a half

586
00:29:31.760 --> 00:29:33.540
<v Speaker 6>of heading the AFL-CIO in this region,

587
00:29:33.700 --> 00:29:35.340
<v Speaker 6>my colleagues and I got together

588
00:29:35.340 --> 00:29:37.660
<v Speaker 6>and we founded a nonprofit policy and research group.

589
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:39.420
<v Speaker 6>We had a research organization called Working Partnerships.

590
00:29:39.860 --> 00:29:41.760
<v Speaker 6>And the reason why we founded the organization

591
00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:43.760
<v Speaker 6>is because we wanted to have some understanding

592
00:29:43.760 --> 00:29:46.440
<v Speaker 6>for the forces that were going on that were affecting our lives.

593
00:29:46.900 --> 00:29:48.640
<v Speaker 6>And in understanding those forces,

594
00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:51.200
<v Speaker 6>we wanted to use the research, the policy work

595
00:29:51.200 --> 00:29:52.140
<v Speaker 6>that we had been developing,

596
00:29:52.300 --> 00:29:54.760
<v Speaker 6>to reinvent or rebuild our organizations,

597
00:29:55.180 --> 00:29:55.780
<v Speaker 6>labor organizations,

598
00:29:56.380 --> 00:29:58.580
<v Speaker 6>and have that information also impact

599
00:29:58.580 --> 00:30:00.960
<v Speaker 6>the kinds of public policies that we advocated for.

600
00:30:02.280 --> 00:30:05.040
<v Speaker 6>We also knew that we needed to form an organization like this

601
00:30:05.040 --> 00:30:06.920
<v Speaker 6>because if working people were going to contest

602
00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:08.140
<v Speaker 6>for the power in the region,

603
00:30:08.220 --> 00:30:09.840
<v Speaker 6>we needed to understand what was going on

604
00:30:09.840 --> 00:30:11.380
<v Speaker 6>and have more than just anecdotal data.

605
00:30:11.860 --> 00:30:14.060
<v Speaker 6>So that when industry leaders went around

606
00:30:14.060 --> 00:30:16.980
<v Speaker 6>with their statistics about what was happening in the economy

607
00:30:16.980 --> 00:30:19.680
<v Speaker 6>and as they were bragging about the prowess of the industry

608
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:20.360
<v Speaker 6>in the region,

609
00:30:21.160 --> 00:30:24.140
<v Speaker 6>and said things like median household income is rising,

610
00:30:24.320 --> 00:30:25.840
<v Speaker 6>and we all looked at each other and we said,

611
00:30:25.900 --> 00:30:27.680
<v Speaker 6>yeah, because more of us are living in the same household,

612
00:30:28.140 --> 00:30:30.760
<v Speaker 6>we were able to actually make that case

613
00:30:30.760 --> 00:30:32.340
<v Speaker 6>beyond just the antidote.

614
00:30:33.540 --> 00:30:35.960
<v Speaker 6>So we formed an organization that's helped us

615
00:30:35.960 --> 00:30:38.780
<v Speaker 6>to reinvent to some extent

616
00:30:38.780 --> 00:30:40.540
<v Speaker 6>the role of people's based organizations

617
00:30:40.540 --> 00:30:42.880
<v Speaker 6>and the public policy strategy that we advocate.

618
00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:45.940
<v Speaker 6>Now quickly, just some of the forces that are going on

619
00:30:45.940 --> 00:30:46.920
<v Speaker 6>and how they affect us,

620
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:48.020
<v Speaker 6>what's happening in the region,

621
00:30:48.140 --> 00:30:49.060
<v Speaker 6>and why it's important.

622
00:30:50.180 --> 00:30:52.640
<v Speaker 6>Over 40%, we've been tracking the growth

623
00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:53.800
<v Speaker 6>in non-standard employment,

624
00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:55.580
<v Speaker 6>or what you call casualized employment,

625
00:30:55.940 --> 00:30:57.920
<v Speaker 6>for the last six and a half years.

626
00:30:58.580 --> 00:31:01.840
<v Speaker 6>Over 40% of the employment in the region is non-standard.

627
00:31:01.860 --> 00:31:03.880
<v Speaker 6>In other words, people do not have a fixed,

628
00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:05.940
<v Speaker 6>permanent relationship between them and their employees.

629
00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:09.500
<v Speaker 6>They have a third party broker that stands between them

630
00:31:09.500 --> 00:31:11.400
<v Speaker 6>and the employer that makes the decisions

631
00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:12.200
<v Speaker 6>about their employment,

632
00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:14.860
<v Speaker 6>whether it's a temp agency, an executive search firm,

633
00:31:14.980 --> 00:31:15.920
<v Speaker 6>a brokering agency,

634
00:31:16.140 --> 00:31:19.000
<v Speaker 6>or whether they just contract for their labor directly.

635
00:31:21.080 --> 00:31:23.400
<v Speaker 6>Now whether or not the economy is doing well,

636
00:31:23.500 --> 00:31:25.860
<v Speaker 6>the growth in non-standard employment continues to grow.

637
00:31:25.980 --> 00:31:27.940
<v Speaker 6>This is not industry's response to a decline

638
00:31:27.940 --> 00:31:30.680
<v Speaker 6>or to recessionary periods in the economy.

639
00:31:30.860 --> 00:31:33.860
<v Speaker 6>This happens whether the economy is going gangbusters or not.

640
00:31:34.780 --> 00:31:35.940
<v Speaker 6>The three forces that are going on,

641
00:31:35.960 --> 00:31:37.780
<v Speaker 6>the three forces that take place that have huge impact,

642
00:31:38.020 --> 00:31:40.000
<v Speaker 6>and I want to just identify those really quickly,

643
00:31:40.160 --> 00:31:43.720
<v Speaker 6>on the region are globalization, outsourcing,

644
00:31:43.860 --> 00:31:45.560
<v Speaker 6>and then the role of skills in the economy.

645
00:31:46.300 --> 00:31:47.700
<v Speaker 6>In the context of globalization,

646
00:31:48.140 --> 00:31:50.800
<v Speaker 6>companies, because they compete in a very volatile context,

647
00:31:50.900 --> 00:31:53.460
<v Speaker 6>have to be able to expand and contract their workforces quickly.

648
00:31:53.740 --> 00:31:57.260
<v Speaker 6>And so the growth of extended workforces continues to take place.

649
00:31:58.160 --> 00:32:01.660
<v Speaker 6>And whether or not, again, the economy is doing well,

650
00:32:01.760 --> 00:32:05.620
<v Speaker 6>and you can see companies posting record-breaking profits,

651
00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:08.640
<v Speaker 6>and sales and exports increasing,

652
00:32:08.920 --> 00:32:12.340
<v Speaker 6>the need to be able to do that and have flexibility within the workforce continues.

653
00:32:13.380 --> 00:32:15.760
<v Speaker 6>Now what's interesting about this is that

654
00:32:17.040 --> 00:32:19.980
<v Speaker 6>although employers are so dependent on flexibility,

655
00:32:21.300 --> 00:32:24.980
<v Speaker 6>and will even oftentimes pay more to have that flexibility,

656
00:32:25.060 --> 00:32:27.020
<v Speaker 6>this is not just about reducing the cost of labor,

657
00:32:28.560 --> 00:32:30.880
<v Speaker 6>it also creates a conflict,

658
00:32:30.940 --> 00:32:32.680
<v Speaker 6>and I hope we'll come back to this later today,

659
00:32:32.780 --> 00:32:33.680
<v Speaker 6>for industry itself.

660
00:32:33.740 --> 00:32:35.360
<v Speaker 6>It's a contradiction in the new economy.

661
00:32:36.120 --> 00:32:37.420
<v Speaker 6>Because on the one hand,

662
00:32:37.420 --> 00:32:41.100
<v Speaker 6>you no longer invest in skills in the development of your workforce,

663
00:32:41.320 --> 00:32:43.680
<v Speaker 6>if your workforce is only going to be with you for about 18 months,

664
00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:45.300
<v Speaker 6>even though you depend on skills.

665
00:32:45.980 --> 00:32:49.020
<v Speaker 6>And the second problem it creates is that it really creates a culture

666
00:32:49.020 --> 00:32:52.360
<v Speaker 6>within a lot of these workplaces where people are no longer loyal to their employer.

667
00:32:52.560 --> 00:32:56.140
<v Speaker 6>And it's important to have a sense of loyalty and reliance in these companies,

668
00:32:56.340 --> 00:32:59.680
<v Speaker 6>because you're not just standing on a line doing repetitive work.

669
00:32:59.960 --> 00:33:01.700
<v Speaker 6>You have to invest the best of yourself,

670
00:33:01.800 --> 00:33:03.920
<v Speaker 6>because you're usually doing work that's unprecedented.

671
00:33:04.140 --> 00:33:05.060
<v Speaker 6>You're cutting new trail.

672
00:33:05.060 --> 00:33:08.520
<v Speaker 6>You need to be able to work collaboratively with people to do pretty difficult things.

673
00:33:09.040 --> 00:33:12.320
<v Speaker 6>And so not having a sense of reliance is a huge problem for these companies,

674
00:33:12.460 --> 00:33:14.700
<v Speaker 6>but yet they still depend on the flexibility of labor,

675
00:33:14.860 --> 00:33:17.560
<v Speaker 6>because they compete in a very, very volatile environment.

676
00:33:19.260 --> 00:33:23.820
<v Speaker 6>And obviously the impact to whether you're at the high end of the labor market or the low end

677
00:33:23.820 --> 00:33:26.380
<v Speaker 6>is increasing insecurity and uncertainty.

678
00:33:27.120 --> 00:33:30.020
<v Speaker 6>The second phenomenon that I want to touch on that's so important

679
00:33:30.020 --> 00:33:32.740
<v Speaker 6>to what's happening in our region and all throughout California

680
00:33:32.740 --> 00:33:34.580
<v Speaker 6>is the phenomenon of outsourcing.

681
00:33:35.060 --> 00:33:39.360
<v Speaker 6>This is not a 1990s management fad or something that's going to turn away anytime soon.

682
00:33:39.600 --> 00:33:42.240
<v Speaker 6>It is a core part of the business model for these firms.

683
00:33:42.700 --> 00:33:44.940
<v Speaker 6>These firms compete on the basis of innovation.

684
00:33:45.180 --> 00:33:49.980
<v Speaker 6>In other words, the company that gets to market faster and first with a new product

685
00:33:49.980 --> 00:33:52.800
<v Speaker 6>or a faster version of a previously released product

686
00:33:52.800 --> 00:33:54.520
<v Speaker 6>catches the worm of massive profitability.

687
00:33:55.400 --> 00:33:59.680
<v Speaker 6>As a consequence, firms need to be able to outsource any function within the firm

688
00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:01.480
<v Speaker 6>that's not core to product development and innovation.

689
00:34:01.840 --> 00:34:04.660
<v Speaker 6>They need to externalize costs that aren't core,

690
00:34:04.660 --> 00:34:05.700
<v Speaker 6>and they need to be able to outsource any function within the firm that's not core to that.

691
00:34:06.020 --> 00:34:11.120
<v Speaker 6>And again, oftentimes firms will pay more money to outsource their employment.

692
00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:13.800
<v Speaker 6>This is not just about saving on labor.

693
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:17.400
<v Speaker 6>And this is an important thing, I think, for us to understand in a public policy context

694
00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:19.740
<v Speaker 6>and for us to understand in the labor movement as well,

695
00:34:19.900 --> 00:34:21.620
<v Speaker 6>that it is not just about cheap labor.

696
00:34:21.780 --> 00:34:23.840
<v Speaker 6>It's about helping them to succeed.

697
00:34:23.960 --> 00:34:25.880
<v Speaker 6>It's the model that they use to succeed.

698
00:34:26.340 --> 00:34:30.280
<v Speaker 6>Now obviously the outsourcing is having a downward pressure on wages and benefits,

699
00:34:30.280 --> 00:34:33.220
<v Speaker 6>because more and more contract firms have to bid for the work.

700
00:34:33.380 --> 00:34:35.540
<v Speaker 6>And so as you bid in a competitive environment,

701
00:34:35.660 --> 00:34:39.120
<v Speaker 6>to get the work from the client firm, it creates a downward pressure on wages and benefits.

702
00:34:40.140 --> 00:34:43.780
<v Speaker 6>Again, the effect for working people, instability, insecurity,

703
00:34:44.020 --> 00:34:47.840
<v Speaker 6>and less and less employment that allows you to live with dignity.

704
00:34:49.040 --> 00:34:52.740
<v Speaker 6>The third phenomenon that I want to touch on is the role of skills in the new economy.

705
00:34:52.800 --> 00:34:58.000
<v Speaker 6>And for many of these firms, information technology industries not just depend on skills,

706
00:34:58.120 --> 00:34:59.760
<v Speaker 6>but they depend on state-of-the-art skills.

707
00:34:59.900 --> 00:35:00.260
<v Speaker 6>And so,

708
00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:03.520
<v Speaker 6>they depend on their workforce to come ready to go to work.

709
00:35:03.600 --> 00:35:04.580
<v Speaker 6>There's no learning curve.

710
00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:05.940
<v Speaker 6>You have to show up and be prepared.

711
00:35:06.520 --> 00:35:10.960
<v Speaker 6>Median job tenure in Silicon Valley and for the entire state of California is under three years.

712
00:35:11.440 --> 00:35:15.680
<v Speaker 6>Massive job churning, in large part because of the need for constantly new skills.

713
00:35:16.520 --> 00:35:21.960
<v Speaker 6>All these three things taken together, globalization, outsourcing, the role of skills,

714
00:35:22.160 --> 00:35:25.180
<v Speaker 6>have created an economy all throughout the U.S.

715
00:35:25.240 --> 00:35:28.600
<v Speaker 6>It's most pronounced in California, but all throughout the U.S.

716
00:35:28.660 --> 00:35:30.260
<v Speaker 6>that's shaped increasingly like this.

717
00:35:30.260 --> 00:35:30.760
<v Speaker 6>It's like an hourglass.

718
00:35:31.120 --> 00:35:35.740
<v Speaker 6>An economy where a lot of high-paid, high-skilled jobs are being created,

719
00:35:35.940 --> 00:35:42.000
<v Speaker 6>a declining middle, and a huge proliferation of low-wage service sector jobs at the bottom.

720
00:35:43.420 --> 00:35:48.500
<v Speaker 6>In Silicon Valley alone, four of the ten fastest-growing occupations pay less than $10 an hour.

721
00:35:50.240 --> 00:35:53.920
<v Speaker 6>And if you look at sort of the education trends over the next decade,

722
00:35:54.060 --> 00:35:58.680
<v Speaker 6>our state department, state education and labor market, labor statistics department,

723
00:35:58.680 --> 00:36:03.060
<v Speaker 6>projects what kind of skill sets or what kind of education will be associated with the jobs that are created.

724
00:36:03.320 --> 00:36:08.100
<v Speaker 6>And for the next decade, they project that 25% of the jobs created will require a bachelor's degree

725
00:36:08.100 --> 00:36:09.660
<v Speaker 6>or a four-year college degree or higher.

726
00:36:10.220 --> 00:36:13.980
<v Speaker 6>And then over 40% will just require a few hours of on-the-job training.

727
00:36:14.220 --> 00:36:16.620
<v Speaker 6>So you can sort of see the genesis of the hourglass.

728
00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:21.140
<v Speaker 6>All of these things together, in terms of what's happening to working people,

729
00:36:21.320 --> 00:36:27.760
<v Speaker 6>the inevitable ebbs and flows of the business cycle, because there is a breakdown in public policy,

730
00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:30.780
<v Speaker 6>a breakdown in the number of people represented in these new industries,

731
00:36:30.940 --> 00:36:35.480
<v Speaker 6>the risk that is inevitably associated with the ebbs and flows of the business cycle

732
00:36:35.480 --> 00:36:38.040
<v Speaker 6>is increasingly being borne by the individual.

733
00:36:38.260 --> 00:36:41.300
<v Speaker 6>There's nothing to sort of buffer the risk that's associated with what's going on.

734
00:36:43.180 --> 00:36:47.820
<v Speaker 6>Many people before me, three wonderful speakers, have talked about what's happening to folks in the workforce,

735
00:36:48.020 --> 00:36:52.620
<v Speaker 6>and so I won't take any more time to describe what the impact is to people,

736
00:36:52.720 --> 00:36:56.880
<v Speaker 6>but I will say that in addition to the impact on people, regions are being —

737
00:36:56.880 --> 00:37:01.240
<v Speaker 6>and the regions in which we live are being impacted as well in a very significant way.

738
00:37:01.720 --> 00:37:05.680
<v Speaker 6>Given the fact that the economy and firms are growing horizontally,

739
00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:09.500
<v Speaker 6>as more and more work is outsourced and less and less of the functions of a firm

740
00:37:09.500 --> 00:37:12.000
<v Speaker 6>are performed under sort of a vertical silo,

741
00:37:12.880 --> 00:37:16.520
<v Speaker 6>the economy is growing in a horizontal way, and it makes place very important

742
00:37:16.520 --> 00:37:18.720
<v Speaker 6>because of the relationship of firms to these companies.

743
00:37:18.760 --> 00:37:20.140
<v Speaker 6>Place becomes very important.

744
00:37:20.620 --> 00:37:25.460
<v Speaker 6>And as a consequence, infrastructure like land use and housing and transportation,

745
00:37:25.460 --> 00:37:30.200
<v Speaker 6>and all sorts of regional social policy issues become very important to firms

746
00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:31.680
<v Speaker 6>and to their bottom line.

747
00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:35.480
<v Speaker 6>They're competing for knowledge workers that can really roam the globe,

748
00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:38.780
<v Speaker 6>and they need to be able to ensure that there's a good housing stock for folks,

749
00:37:38.880 --> 00:37:43.040
<v Speaker 6>good transportation systems, that the land use policies work for them as they expand.

750
00:37:44.020 --> 00:37:47.400
<v Speaker 6>And so there's a whole range of infrastructure issues that become important.

751
00:37:47.860 --> 00:37:50.660
<v Speaker 6>And so these firms become major players in the region.

752
00:37:50.980 --> 00:37:54.100
<v Speaker 6>Now the folks that they care about is sort of the top half of the hourglass,

753
00:37:54.200 --> 00:37:55.440
<v Speaker 6>not necessarily the rest of us.

754
00:37:55.460 --> 00:37:59.540
<v Speaker 6>But they do have an interest in taking care of those people.

755
00:38:00.640 --> 00:38:03.480
<v Speaker 6>What happens is because of the shape of the economy,

756
00:38:03.540 --> 00:38:07.400
<v Speaker 6>what begins to happen in our region, not only do industries become major players politically

757
00:38:07.400 --> 00:38:10.680
<v Speaker 6>in a way that they may not have been at such a regional level in the past,

758
00:38:11.420 --> 00:38:15.080
<v Speaker 6>but the top half of the hourglass begins to set the wage standards

759
00:38:15.080 --> 00:38:17.900
<v Speaker 6>or the cost of living within the region for the bottom half.

760
00:38:18.340 --> 00:38:19.540
<v Speaker 6>Housing is a great example.

761
00:38:19.840 --> 00:38:21.860
<v Speaker 6>When you have huge amounts of disposable income,

762
00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:25.440
<v Speaker 6>you can bid up the cost of land by coming in and putting a million dollars down the drain.

763
00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:26.800
<v Speaker 6>You can put a million dollars down on a postage stamp of property.

764
00:38:27.200 --> 00:38:30.240
<v Speaker 6>And then that pulls up all the prices for everybody else.

765
00:38:30.680 --> 00:38:35.220
<v Speaker 6>And as a consequence, those of us who are sort of serving the top half of the hourglass,

766
00:38:35.360 --> 00:38:36.540
<v Speaker 6>we're getting pushed out of the regions.

767
00:38:37.020 --> 00:38:41.600
<v Speaker 6>And so not only is the cost of living increasing, but it's also leading to sprawl.

768
00:38:42.060 --> 00:38:45.320
<v Speaker 6>So these are some of the examples of what's happening at the regional level

769
00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:48.880
<v Speaker 6>as a consequence of the way in which the economy is rooting itself

770
00:38:48.880 --> 00:38:53.140
<v Speaker 6>and what the implications are for those of us who live and work in it.

771
00:38:53.720 --> 00:38:54.160
<v Speaker 6>Now,

772
00:38:55.440 --> 00:38:57.320
<v Speaker 6>the massive insecurity that I've described,

773
00:38:57.500 --> 00:39:01.200
<v Speaker 6>which again I don't think is unique to Silicon Valley, unique to California,

774
00:39:01.460 --> 00:39:03.120
<v Speaker 6>and not unique to IT industry.

775
00:39:03.300 --> 00:39:06.680
<v Speaker 6>We see so many other industries being refashioned in the same way.

776
00:39:07.660 --> 00:39:10.140
<v Speaker 6>I still believe, in spite of what's happening,

777
00:39:10.320 --> 00:39:13.500
<v Speaker 6>I fundamentally believe that we can create security

778
00:39:13.500 --> 00:39:18.820
<v Speaker 6>and we can create a sense of permanence and predictability for working people in this new context.

779
00:39:19.620 --> 00:39:24.260
<v Speaker 6>You know, after all, there was nothing preordained about the post-World War II economy.

780
00:39:24.260 --> 00:39:30.760
<v Speaker 6>The fact that those jobs, manufacturing jobs, created decent wages and benefits for folks

781
00:39:30.760 --> 00:39:33.100
<v Speaker 6>was because of the institution of collective bargaining.

782
00:39:33.280 --> 00:39:35.700
<v Speaker 6>It was because of a social policy framework that got created.

783
00:39:35.980 --> 00:39:40.720
<v Speaker 6>It wasn't because those jobs out of the chute provided decent standard of living for all of us.

784
00:39:41.060 --> 00:39:45.200
<v Speaker 6>So while I'm not a romantic, I'm actually very optimistic

785
00:39:45.820 --> 00:39:50.320
<v Speaker 6>about our ability to be able to rationalize this environment.

786
00:39:51.180 --> 00:39:53.960
<v Speaker 6>Quickly, what I think the implications are for it,

787
00:39:53.960 --> 00:39:57.880
<v Speaker 6>for unions and for public policy, are the following.

788
00:39:58.760 --> 00:40:01.700
<v Speaker 6>Unions will need to think very differently about two things.

789
00:40:01.980 --> 00:40:07.000
<v Speaker 6>The service functions that they perform and the relationship they have to their members.

790
00:40:07.640 --> 00:40:10.220
<v Speaker 6>In terms of the service functions, the majority of unions,

791
00:40:10.340 --> 00:40:14.240
<v Speaker 6>if you sort of probably take a pie chart and break down how they spend their day,

792
00:40:14.460 --> 00:40:18.120
<v Speaker 6>they probably disproportionately spend their time representing the interests,

793
00:40:18.420 --> 00:40:21.960
<v Speaker 6>the problems our members are having, grievances within a work site.

794
00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:23.940
<v Speaker 6>And if you've ever been a union representative,

795
00:40:23.960 --> 00:40:24.060
<v Speaker 6>you've probably seen a lot of the work that's happening.

796
00:40:24.200 --> 00:40:27.540
<v Speaker 6>And, you know, most of those things are pretty, you know, I came in late.

797
00:40:27.720 --> 00:40:31.420
<v Speaker 6>You know, my boss is coming after me.

798
00:40:31.480 --> 00:40:34.180
<v Speaker 6>I mean, it's not stuff that is rocket science.

799
00:40:34.380 --> 00:40:35.340
<v Speaker 6>It takes a lot of time.

800
00:40:35.460 --> 00:40:37.640
<v Speaker 6>As the rest of the world is moving on around you

801
00:40:37.640 --> 00:40:39.040
<v Speaker 6>and your industries are changing dramatically,

802
00:40:39.280 --> 00:40:41.640
<v Speaker 6>you're worried about, you know, defending somebody who came in late.

803
00:40:41.820 --> 00:40:43.820
<v Speaker 6>And I don't mean that disrespectfully, but the point is,

804
00:40:43.820 --> 00:40:48.060
<v Speaker 6>is that the kinds of service functions we perform as organizations must fundamentally shift

805
00:40:48.060 --> 00:40:49.940
<v Speaker 6>if we are going to be value-added in the economy

806
00:40:53.960 --> 00:40:54.120
<v Speaker 6>and in the work that we do.

807
00:40:54.120 --> 00:40:58.120
<v Speaker 6>And that means, concretely, is investing a huge amount of our resources in training

808
00:40:58.120 --> 00:41:00.920
<v Speaker 6>and creating occupational communities within a region

809
00:41:00.920 --> 00:41:03.380
<v Speaker 6>so that people, we really do become the center

810
00:41:03.380 --> 00:41:07.260
<v Speaker 6>where people can come and upgrade skills and seek training.

811
00:41:07.460 --> 00:41:09.520
<v Speaker 6>And we will be the only institution, by the way,

812
00:41:09.580 --> 00:41:12.280
<v Speaker 6>that will be thinking about the long-term needs of people in the workforce.

813
00:41:13.340 --> 00:41:14.900
<v Speaker 6>Employers, if they do invest in training,

814
00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:17.720
<v Speaker 6>are thinking about the next 18-month product cycle that they need skills for.

815
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:20.600
<v Speaker 6>We're the only institution that can be both nimble,

816
00:41:20.680 --> 00:41:22.700
<v Speaker 6>government cannot do this on a regional level,

817
00:41:22.700 --> 00:41:26.880
<v Speaker 6>but can be nimble enough to anticipate and work with employers on skill sets,

818
00:41:27.120 --> 00:41:30.780
<v Speaker 6>but also be thinking about the long-term needs of our members.

819
00:41:31.360 --> 00:41:37.260
<v Speaker 6>The creation of portable benefits and plans that allow people to move from job to job,

820
00:41:37.920 --> 00:41:40.760
<v Speaker 6>the ability for us to bargain across employers

821
00:41:40.760 --> 00:41:43.060
<v Speaker 6>as more and more of this outsourcing takes place,

822
00:41:43.100 --> 00:41:46.380
<v Speaker 6>we can really become the one permanent place that people are connected to

823
00:41:46.380 --> 00:41:48.140
<v Speaker 6>as they move from job to job.

824
00:41:49.700 --> 00:41:52.680
<v Speaker 6>I also think that given the fact that we're in a time of crisis,

825
00:41:52.680 --> 00:41:54.460
<v Speaker 6>given the fact that the role of region is so important,

826
00:41:55.120 --> 00:41:58.000
<v Speaker 6>given the fact that industry has become such a big player

827
00:41:58.000 --> 00:41:59.960
<v Speaker 6>in regional decision-making around infrastructure

828
00:41:59.960 --> 00:42:02.820
<v Speaker 6>and around a dwindling public resource base,

829
00:42:03.320 --> 00:42:05.420
<v Speaker 6>that we have to be able to reinvent ourselves

830
00:42:05.420 --> 00:42:07.140
<v Speaker 6>not only as labor market organizations,

831
00:42:07.420 --> 00:42:09.140
<v Speaker 6>but also as social and political organizations,

832
00:42:09.400 --> 00:42:11.300
<v Speaker 6>and need to be involved in the broader set of issues

833
00:42:11.300 --> 00:42:12.520
<v Speaker 6>that are going on in our communities.

834
00:42:13.960 --> 00:42:16.140
<v Speaker 6>On the issue of our relationship to our members,

835
00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:18.820
<v Speaker 6>I would say that because people will move in and out of the workforce

836
00:42:18.820 --> 00:42:21.020
<v Speaker 6>in a much more fluid way than they do today,

837
00:42:21.020 --> 00:42:24.120
<v Speaker 6>or increasingly more fluid than they are today,

838
00:42:24.320 --> 00:42:26.900
<v Speaker 6>then unions need to think about their relationship to their members

839
00:42:26.900 --> 00:42:29.800
<v Speaker 6>sort of like I've always envisioned the relationship universities have to an alum.

840
00:42:30.100 --> 00:42:32.060
<v Speaker 6>When you're really connected to that person,

841
00:42:32.100 --> 00:42:33.880
<v Speaker 6>that person's connected to you over a lifetime.

842
00:42:34.320 --> 00:42:37.920
<v Speaker 6>So a different set of service functions and a different relationship.

843
00:42:38.820 --> 00:42:42.300
<v Speaker 6>The second, it is not necessarily just employment-based or workplace-based.

844
00:42:42.880 --> 00:42:45.320
<v Speaker 6>Then really quickly, in terms of the public policy environment,

845
00:42:45.660 --> 00:42:48.760
<v Speaker 6>it is not rocket science to figure out how to take our employment policies

846
00:42:48.760 --> 00:42:51.000
<v Speaker 6>and our labor laws and make them work for us.

847
00:42:51.020 --> 00:42:52.120
<v Speaker 6>It is to figure out how to make sure that we're a changing group of workers.

848
00:42:52.540 --> 00:42:54.480
<v Speaker 6>This should not be a hard thing to do.

849
00:42:54.660 --> 00:42:56.120
<v Speaker 6>This is not a policy challenge.

850
00:42:56.220 --> 00:42:57.520
<v Speaker 6>It's a question of political will.

851
00:42:57.720 --> 00:42:59.680
<v Speaker 6>And I think my time's probably running out,

852
00:42:59.740 --> 00:43:02.420
<v Speaker 6>so I'm going to be happy under question and answer session

853
00:43:02.420 --> 00:43:04.780
<v Speaker 6>to say what those public policy reforms need to look like.

854
00:43:05.480 --> 00:43:07.900
<v Speaker 6>And I guess I would just wrap this up by saying that,

855
00:43:08.020 --> 00:43:09.900
<v Speaker 6>and particularly given the region that I come from,

856
00:43:09.960 --> 00:43:12.060
<v Speaker 6>that capital does not have a monopoly on innovation.

857
00:43:12.920 --> 00:43:16.760
<v Speaker 6>And I fundamentally believe that working people really can reinvent their organizations,

858
00:43:17.240 --> 00:43:20.100
<v Speaker 6>that we really can get our arms around globalization.

859
00:43:21.020 --> 00:43:22.780
<v Speaker 6>It's not inevitable about the way the economy is growing

860
00:43:22.780 --> 00:43:24.120
<v Speaker 6>that it has to leave people behind.

861
00:43:24.380 --> 00:43:26.620
<v Speaker 6>Our social arrangements, our institutional arrangements

862
00:43:26.620 --> 00:43:27.980
<v Speaker 6>have been slowed to catch up.

863
00:43:28.860 --> 00:43:31.340
<v Speaker 6>And that's not the first time in history that's happened.

864
00:43:31.420 --> 00:43:33.560
<v Speaker 6>That's a typical trend and a typical pattern.

865
00:43:34.040 --> 00:43:38.320
<v Speaker 6>But I fundamentally believe that we can rebuild organizations

866
00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:41.520
<v Speaker 6>that can contest for power and bring balance back to this equation.

867
00:43:42.660 --> 00:43:45.380
<v Speaker 6>The only thing that will prohibit us from doing that is leadership.

868
00:43:46.380 --> 00:43:49.440
<v Speaker 6>I'm not, I want to be very honest that I don't,

869
00:43:50.400 --> 00:43:51.000
<v Speaker 6>I don't think that I'm a leader.

870
00:43:51.020 --> 00:43:52.260
<v Speaker 6>I don't think that I'm in any way,

871
00:43:52.380 --> 00:43:55.960
<v Speaker 6>I'm not romantic about what it will take to rebuild power again for people.

872
00:43:56.120 --> 00:44:02.600
<v Speaker 6>We've lost so much, we've lost so much of what we've had in the past

873
00:44:02.600 --> 00:44:06.400
<v Speaker 6>in terms of our ability to influence politics and public policy.

874
00:44:06.580 --> 00:44:08.800
<v Speaker 6>And I'm, so I'm not trying to underestimate what it will take,

875
00:44:08.880 --> 00:44:10.420
<v Speaker 6>but I think the only thing that will limit us,

876
00:44:10.540 --> 00:44:13.980
<v Speaker 6>limit us is our ability to envision what the world needs to look like

877
00:44:13.980 --> 00:44:14.940
<v Speaker 6>and to imagine it.

878
00:44:15.340 --> 00:44:17.800
<v Speaker 6>And then for those of us who are leaders within organizations

879
00:44:17.800 --> 00:44:20.840
<v Speaker 6>to be bold about our leadership and to acknowledge that what we're doing

880
00:44:20.840 --> 00:44:21.000
<v Speaker 6>to us is not going to be the same as what we're doing to others.

881
00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:21.340
<v Speaker 6>It doesn't work.

882
00:44:21.780 --> 00:44:24.300
<v Speaker 6>And so I really think it's about leadership and political will

883
00:44:24.300 --> 00:44:26.420
<v Speaker 6>that is the only thing that holds us back at a time

884
00:44:26.420 --> 00:44:27.700
<v Speaker 6>where people feel pretty overwhelmed.

885
00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.680
<v Speaker 6>I really do believe we can regain and re-get our arms around the economy

886
00:44:31.680 --> 00:44:34.100
<v Speaker 6>and bring this thing back home so it works for working people.

887
00:44:34.520 --> 00:44:35.240
<v Speaker 6>So thank you.

888
00:44:46.720 --> 00:44:47.120
<v Speaker 7>Hello.

889
00:44:49.180 --> 00:44:50.980
<v Speaker 7>The idea I want to put to you today is that,

890
00:44:51.000 --> 00:44:56.140
<v Speaker 7>the greatest transformation of the labor market over the next 30 years

891
00:44:56.140 --> 00:44:59.120
<v Speaker 7>will come about not as a result of demographics

892
00:45:00.040 --> 00:45:02.860
<v Speaker 7>and not as a result of technological change

893
00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:06.260
<v Speaker 7>and not even as a result of globalization.

894
00:45:07.500 --> 00:45:12.400
<v Speaker 7>It will come about as a result of the declining availability of fossil fuels.

895
00:45:14.140 --> 00:45:18.540
<v Speaker 7>This might seem odd, but there seems to be some pretty compelling evidence

896
00:45:18.540 --> 00:45:20.880
<v Speaker 7>that global demand for crude oil,

897
00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:24.440
<v Speaker 7>will begin to outstrip supply within the next decade.

898
00:45:24.940 --> 00:45:28.760
<v Speaker 7>I'd point you, for example, to Richard Heinberg's new book,

899
00:45:28.840 --> 00:45:32.440
<v Speaker 7>The Part is Over, and the work of the Oil Depletion Analysis Center.

900
00:45:33.360 --> 00:45:38.000
<v Speaker 7>The availability of conventional oil supplies seems to be about to peak

901
00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:42.340
<v Speaker 7>and the likely substitutes like oil shales and tar sands

902
00:45:42.340 --> 00:45:49.600
<v Speaker 7>are expensive to extract and process and produce much less versatile fuels.

903
00:45:50.860 --> 00:45:54.560
<v Speaker 7>If, as it seems likely, demand continues to grow,

904
00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:57.940
<v Speaker 7>we'll encounter what's commonly described as an oil shock.

905
00:45:58.220 --> 00:46:00.520
<v Speaker 7>We saw an oil shock in the 1970s,

906
00:46:00.540 --> 00:46:04.800
<v Speaker 7>but the sort of oil shock we're talking about here is not one which goes away.

907
00:46:05.140 --> 00:46:09.240
<v Speaker 7>It's one in which prices continue to rise and rise

908
00:46:10.880 --> 00:46:16.800
<v Speaker 7>and without any possibility that the situation gets turned around.

909
00:46:17.140 --> 00:46:19.580
<v Speaker 7>And this time, it's not just the environmental crisis,

910
00:46:19.600 --> 00:46:19.720
<v Speaker 7>it's the oil crisis.

911
00:46:19.720 --> 00:46:20.720
<v Speaker 7>And one of the environmentalists who are saying this

912
00:46:20.720 --> 00:46:22.440
<v Speaker 7>is quite a lot of the oil men as well.

913
00:46:24.260 --> 00:46:27.760
<v Speaker 7>So, given that this seems to be happening, and happening very rapidly,

914
00:46:27.900 --> 00:46:32.420
<v Speaker 7>that we're rapidly approaching a situation in which demand is likely to outstrip supply,

915
00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:38.320
<v Speaker 7>it seems to me that we've only got one set of choices when we're facing this outcome.

916
00:46:39.180 --> 00:46:43.500
<v Speaker 7>The first is to sit back and wait for a sudden reduction of supply

917
00:46:43.500 --> 00:46:45.660
<v Speaker 7>and a massive increase in prices

918
00:46:45.660 --> 00:46:49.100
<v Speaker 7>and give ourselves no time to respond to the transformation.

919
00:46:49.900 --> 00:46:55.580
<v Speaker 7>And the second is to manage our retreat from the fossil fuel economy.

920
00:46:56.560 --> 00:46:59.880
<v Speaker 7>Now, for many years, I, like many environmentalists,

921
00:46:59.940 --> 00:47:02.240
<v Speaker 7>have been urging governments to manage the retreat,

922
00:47:02.400 --> 00:47:07.200
<v Speaker 7>to switch to a low-carbon economy through choice rather than through necessity,

923
00:47:07.460 --> 00:47:10.980
<v Speaker 7>for the simple reason that if we use all the fossil fuel which is available,

924
00:47:11.260 --> 00:47:13.760
<v Speaker 7>we'll cook the planet through climate change.

925
00:47:15.100 --> 00:47:18.740
<v Speaker 7>Unfortunately, the economic realities as well as the political ones,

926
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:19.580
<v Speaker 7>I'm sure you're aware of them,

927
00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:20.220
<v Speaker 7>I'm sure you're aware of this in Australia,

928
00:47:20.400 --> 00:47:23.480
<v Speaker 7>but the economic realities militate against us.

929
00:47:23.600 --> 00:47:27.360
<v Speaker 7>Of course, as oil starts to become scarce and the price begins to rise,

930
00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:32.240
<v Speaker 7>the economic imperative to exploit it becomes greater rather than lesser

931
00:47:32.240 --> 00:47:34.080
<v Speaker 7>as you get closer to the problem.

932
00:47:34.320 --> 00:47:37.080
<v Speaker 7>Thus, we accelerate towards destruction.

933
00:47:38.320 --> 00:47:40.720
<v Speaker 7>But as far as the labour market is concerned,

934
00:47:41.020 --> 00:47:46.280
<v Speaker 7>the effect of a switch to a low-carbon economy will be the same whether we design it or not.

935
00:47:46.560 --> 00:47:48.260
<v Speaker 7>The only difference will be

936
00:47:48.260 --> 00:47:50.440
<v Speaker 7>our degree of preparation for the change.

937
00:47:51.160 --> 00:47:53.800
<v Speaker 7>The principal transformation will be this,

938
00:47:53.860 --> 00:47:58.820
<v Speaker 7>that the patterns of transport we now take for granted will come to an end.

939
00:47:59.680 --> 00:48:04.460
<v Speaker 7>The entire global economy is built on the expectation that transport will remain cheap.

940
00:48:04.840 --> 00:48:08.560
<v Speaker 7>The geographer David Harvey has pointed out that 50 years ago,

941
00:48:08.600 --> 00:48:13.180
<v Speaker 7>the economic textbooks used to refer to beer as a classic example of a product

942
00:48:13.180 --> 00:48:17.760
<v Speaker 7>which would always be traded locally as it costs so little to buy but a lot to transport.

943
00:48:17.760 --> 00:48:21.880
<v Speaker 7>But as transport prices have fallen, beer has gone global.

944
00:48:22.060 --> 00:48:25.120
<v Speaker 7>In Britain, we drink Fosters and Castlemaine,

945
00:48:25.220 --> 00:48:29.160
<v Speaker 7>and here, from what I've seen, you drink quite a lot of Stella and Heineken.

946
00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:34.920
<v Speaker 7>The result of the globalisation of production caused by cheap transport,

947
00:48:35.160 --> 00:48:37.600
<v Speaker 7>of course, is that, as we've been hearing,

948
00:48:37.940 --> 00:48:40.800
<v Speaker 7>labour has become almost infinitely exploitable

949
00:48:40.800 --> 00:48:44.400
<v Speaker 7>because corporations can locate wherever it's cheapest.

950
00:48:44.800 --> 00:48:47.740
<v Speaker 7>Raw materials can be transported to the market,

951
00:48:47.740 --> 00:48:49.560
<v Speaker 7>to the places where labour costs are lowest,

952
00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:53.460
<v Speaker 7>and that's kind of what drives the way the global economy works at the moment.

953
00:48:54.480 --> 00:48:57.080
<v Speaker 7>On the other hand, in a low-carbon economy,

954
00:48:57.320 --> 00:49:02.300
<v Speaker 7>transport ceases to become a marginal cost and it becomes a central cost.

955
00:49:02.620 --> 00:49:05.680
<v Speaker 7>The price of labour is no longer the only consideration

956
00:49:05.680 --> 00:49:09.140
<v Speaker 7>that companies take into account when deciding where to locate.

957
00:49:10.480 --> 00:49:14.900
<v Speaker 7>Manufacturing migrates back to wherever the principal raw materials are found.

958
00:49:15.740 --> 00:49:17.520
<v Speaker 7>It becomes a lot cheaper to transport

959
00:49:17.740 --> 00:49:21.980
<v Speaker 7>car parts around the world than to transport the iron ore from which they're made.

960
00:49:22.960 --> 00:49:27.460
<v Speaker 7>Manufacturing capacity, in other words, continues to move from the rich world to the poor world,

961
00:49:27.580 --> 00:49:31.120
<v Speaker 7>but this time not because the labour in the poor world is cheaper,

962
00:49:31.740 --> 00:49:33.820
<v Speaker 7>but because that's where most of the raw materials are.

963
00:49:34.280 --> 00:49:38.020
<v Speaker 7>At the same time, the price of most products increases substantially

964
00:49:38.740 --> 00:49:41.440
<v Speaker 7>and the consumer boom slows and then goes into reverse.

965
00:49:43.020 --> 00:49:45.160
<v Speaker 7>Manufactures become less globalised.

966
00:49:45.420 --> 00:49:47.720
<v Speaker 7>Regional economies will once more be more globalised,

967
00:49:47.740 --> 00:49:50.900
<v Speaker 7>and this will begin to reflect the availability of raw materials.

968
00:49:51.380 --> 00:49:56.880
<v Speaker 7>And this will especially be the case when we're dealing with food and building materials, for example.

969
00:49:57.080 --> 00:49:59.800
<v Speaker 7>We're likely to see a return to local food economies

970
00:49:59.800 --> 00:50:03.500
<v Speaker 7>and to building which relies on whatever materials are closest to hand.

971
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:07.440
<v Speaker 7>In those respects, the economy, and therefore the labour market,

972
00:50:07.680 --> 00:50:10.460
<v Speaker 7>will begin to look more like those of previous centuries.

973
00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.360
<v Speaker 7>But in other respects, they're likely to be very different.

974
00:50:14.020 --> 00:50:16.280
<v Speaker 7>We're not talking about the end of globalisation.

975
00:50:16.280 --> 00:50:21.600
<v Speaker 7>A reduced availability of fossil fuels will have little impact on most of the service industries.

976
00:50:21.780 --> 00:50:24.160
<v Speaker 7>The media will continue to globalise,

977
00:50:24.200 --> 00:50:27.380
<v Speaker 7>and while people all over the world might stop eating Big Macs,

978
00:50:27.380 --> 00:50:29.180
<v Speaker 7>they might not stop watching Friends.

979
00:50:30.460 --> 00:50:34.100
<v Speaker 7>For regions which don't possess valuable raw materials,

980
00:50:34.300 --> 00:50:36.520
<v Speaker 7>the service industries will become all-important.

981
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:40.280
<v Speaker 7>But global corporations will redouble their efforts to monopolise

982
00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:45.040
<v Speaker 7>the services which can be globalised.

983
00:50:45.120 --> 00:50:46.260
<v Speaker 7>I'm not sure Rupert Murdoch is aware of this.

984
00:50:46.260 --> 00:50:47.500
<v Speaker 7>I'm sure Rupert Murdoch is looking at this very closely.

985
00:50:48.180 --> 00:50:51.180
<v Speaker 7>In those parts of the world which do possess raw materials,

986
00:50:51.540 --> 00:50:54.280
<v Speaker 7>we'll see a sudden reversal of immigration policies

987
00:50:54.280 --> 00:50:58.080
<v Speaker 7>as corporations demand that governments let more people in

988
00:50:58.080 --> 00:51:00.120
<v Speaker 7>in order to bring down the cost of labour.

989
00:51:00.520 --> 00:51:03.580
<v Speaker 7>Those newspapers which previously campaigned against immigration

990
00:51:04.260 --> 00:51:06.060
<v Speaker 7>will start to campaign in favour of it.

991
00:51:07.420 --> 00:51:10.960
<v Speaker 7>So what will this mean for people in places like South Australia?

992
00:51:11.460 --> 00:51:16.020
<v Speaker 7>Well, it seems to me that Australia as a whole will be particularly hard hit by this.

993
00:51:16.260 --> 00:51:18.100
<v Speaker 7>Because it's so far away from everywhere else.

994
00:51:18.400 --> 00:51:22.740
<v Speaker 7>And this does suggest that John Howard's flat denial

995
00:51:23.260 --> 00:51:25.600
<v Speaker 7>that there's a problem at all is particularly stupid.

996
00:51:33.140 --> 00:51:37.300
<v Speaker 7>But for the people of Adelaide, well, I'm not entirely sure.

997
00:51:37.500 --> 00:51:40.040
<v Speaker 7>It could certainly spell trouble for your wine industry.

998
00:51:40.440 --> 00:51:44.560
<v Speaker 7>It could become prohibitively expensive to ship wine to Europe, for example.

999
00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:46.240
<v Speaker 7>It'll probably be more expensive to ship wine to Europe.

1000
00:51:46.260 --> 00:51:48.600
<v Speaker 7>It could be bad news for your car manufacturing industry as well.

1001
00:51:48.940 --> 00:51:52.300
<v Speaker 7>But it might also create a host of new opportunities

1002
00:51:52.920 --> 00:51:57.460
<v Speaker 7>which develop as a high price of imports ensures that many of the products you need

1003
00:51:57.460 --> 00:51:59.420
<v Speaker 7>have to be developed closer to home.

1004
00:51:59.640 --> 00:52:04.800
<v Speaker 7>It might also lead, interestingly, to a re-stabilisation of the labour market

1005
00:52:04.800 --> 00:52:08.180
<v Speaker 7>and an increase in job security because it becomes harder

1006
00:52:08.180 --> 00:52:10.820
<v Speaker 7>for companies to shift production around the world

1007
00:52:10.820 --> 00:52:15.580
<v Speaker 7>if they are much more dependent on where things come from

1008
00:52:15.580 --> 00:52:17.060
<v Speaker 7>because of the high price of transport.

1009
00:52:17.720 --> 00:52:20.680
<v Speaker 7>But quite how it'll all shake out I really can't say.

1010
00:52:20.800 --> 00:52:23.820
<v Speaker 7>But it seems to me that this will be a transformation

1011
00:52:23.820 --> 00:52:25.740
<v Speaker 7>and it will be a massive transformation.

1012
00:52:26.640 --> 00:52:29.580
<v Speaker 7>From now on, a wise government is one which recognises

1013
00:52:30.160 --> 00:52:34.800
<v Speaker 7>that cheap fossil fuel was a peculiarity of a few decades

1014
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:36.960
<v Speaker 7>which will probably never be repeated.

1015
00:52:37.460 --> 00:52:41.540
<v Speaker 7>A wise people is one which demands that its government begins planning

1016
00:52:41.540 --> 00:52:45.560
<v Speaker 7>for the economic and social transformation before the oil revolution.

1017
00:52:45.580 --> 00:52:49.960
<v Speaker 7>And even wiser people is one which demands a reversal

1018
00:52:49.960 --> 00:52:53.380
<v Speaker 7>of its government's preposterous denial of global warming

1019
00:52:53.380 --> 00:52:57.360
<v Speaker 7>and starts to engage with reality rather than wishful thinking.

1020
00:52:57.620 --> 00:52:58.160
<v Speaker 7>Thank you.

1021
00:53:13.300 --> 00:53:13.840
<v Chair>APPLAUSE

1022
00:53:13.840 --> 00:53:18.120
<v Chair>OK, there were five excellent presentations.

1023
00:53:18.540 --> 00:53:21.200
<v Chair>George's was, I think, the most forward-looking

1024
00:53:21.200 --> 00:53:25.280
<v Chair>in foreshadowing a very different kind of economy to what we live in now.

1025
00:53:26.020 --> 00:53:28.140
<v Chair>We've got about 20 minutes or so left.

1026
00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:31.300
<v Chair>So for questions, there's a microphone in the centre here

1027
00:53:31.300 --> 00:53:32.880
<v Chair>and a microphone at the top.

1028
00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:37.000
<v Chair>And can I say, with respect to the questioners,

1029
00:53:37.020 --> 00:53:40.360
<v Chair>we love to hear your questions, but I don't want to have a situation

1030
00:53:40.360 --> 00:53:42.940
<v Chair>that people in here are here to listen to the panel.

1031
00:53:43.720 --> 00:53:46.420
<v Chair>So keep your questions concise if you can

1032
00:53:46.420 --> 00:53:49.660
<v Chair>so that we can have some good debate amongst the people on the panel.

1033
00:53:50.560 --> 00:53:51.280
<v Speaker 3>Thank you.

1034
00:53:53.180 --> 00:53:58.120
<v Speaker 3>I think that's rather unfair because you were given 45 minutes or more

1035
00:53:58.160 --> 00:53:59.780
<v Speaker 3>and each one...

1036
00:53:59.780 --> 00:54:00.160
<v Speaker 3>Anyway...

1037
00:54:00.680 --> 00:54:01.240
<v Chair>Shall we take a vote?

1038
00:54:01.440 --> 00:54:01.760
<v Speaker 3>All right.

1039
00:54:02.760 --> 00:54:03.440
<v Speaker 3>Question.

1040
00:54:03.580 --> 00:54:04.760
<v Speaker 3>All we... OK.

1041
00:54:04.940 --> 00:54:05.780
<v Speaker 3>All the...

1042
00:54:05.780 --> 00:54:10.600
<v Speaker 3>The first two speakers spoke about to be rewarded,

1043
00:54:10.660 --> 00:54:15.160
<v Speaker 3>to produce children, to live...

1044
00:54:16.340 --> 00:54:18.320
<v Speaker 3>..to generate a family.

1045
00:54:18.620 --> 00:54:21.600
<v Speaker 3>Michael Piers, you said work is hard.

1046
00:54:22.320 --> 00:54:25.320
<v Speaker 3>You said the economy is this shape,

1047
00:54:25.380 --> 00:54:26.700
<v Speaker 3>which is an automatic...

1048
00:54:28.440 --> 00:54:30.480
<v Speaker 3>..consequence of things getting harder

1049
00:54:31.160 --> 00:54:33.660
<v Speaker 3>because there'll be a few rich ones,

1050
00:54:33.900 --> 00:54:37.840
<v Speaker 3>only fewer and fewer, but immensely rich ones,

1051
00:54:37.960 --> 00:54:42.480
<v Speaker 3>and the rest are the ones who are frozen out

1052
00:54:42.480 --> 00:54:46.320
<v Speaker 3>through competition and through other various ideas.

1053
00:54:46.600 --> 00:54:50.020
<v Speaker 3>And the fuel question, of course, is...

1054
00:54:50.020 --> 00:54:55.300
<v Speaker 3>All these questions point that the present civilisation, as we work,

1055
00:54:55.520 --> 00:54:57.580
<v Speaker 3>is coming to a sticky end.

1056
00:54:57.580 --> 00:54:58.860
<v Speaker 3>And why?

1057
00:54:59.520 --> 00:55:02.500
<v Speaker 3>Because, A, the environment can't carry

1058
00:55:02.500 --> 00:55:06.520
<v Speaker 3>these sort of masses of demands that are being made on it,

1059
00:55:06.560 --> 00:55:12.280
<v Speaker 3>and a contributing factor is the...are the population densities.

1060
00:55:12.520 --> 00:55:17.720
<v Speaker 3>Now, is it still sensible to reward people

1061
00:55:17.720 --> 00:55:20.720
<v Speaker 3>when they want to have children?

1062
00:55:20.780 --> 00:55:23.560
<v Speaker 3>Shouldn't it be just as sensible to reward those...

1063
00:55:23.560 --> 00:55:23.660
<v Speaker 3>OK, that's the question. Thanks very much.

1064
00:55:23.660 --> 00:55:25.840
<v Speaker 3>..who do not want to produce?

1065
00:55:26.260 --> 00:55:27.560
<v Chair>Is it sensible to reward...

1066
00:55:27.560 --> 00:55:29.700
<v Chair>..reward people who want to have babies?

1067
00:55:30.060 --> 00:55:30.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah.

1068
00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:33.540
<v Speaker 2>Well, I don't know that we're really looking

1069
00:55:34.520 --> 00:55:38.540
<v Speaker 2>to be rewarded for reproducing.

1070
00:55:38.540 --> 00:55:43.700
<v Speaker 2>I think just we would be happy not to be scapegoated for it.

1071
00:55:44.640 --> 00:55:46.660
<v Speaker 3>That's a good answer.

1072
00:55:50.380 --> 00:55:51.940
<v Chair>OK, next question.

1073
00:55:52.200 --> 00:55:53.500
<v Speaker 3>Can I just add... No, sorry.

1074
00:55:54.800 --> 00:55:57.540
<v Chair>Sorry, Barbara, you want to...

1075
00:55:57.560 --> 00:55:58.460
<v Chair>Can I say something? Go on.

1076
00:55:58.580 --> 00:56:00.820
<v Speaker 4>And I would add to that eloquent answer

1077
00:56:00.820 --> 00:56:03.620
<v Speaker 4>that one in four Australians who are 20

1078
00:56:03.620 --> 00:56:04.960
<v Speaker 4>aren't going to reproduce.

1079
00:56:05.320 --> 00:56:06.360
<v Speaker 4>We are at 1.7.

1080
00:56:06.380 --> 00:56:08.240
<v Speaker 3>Shouldn't they be also rewarded?

1081
00:56:08.680 --> 00:56:10.800
<v Speaker 4>I'm suggesting that there are...

1082
00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:13.480
<v Speaker 4>People are making decisions privately around reproduction

1083
00:56:13.480 --> 00:56:16.720
<v Speaker 4>which do have really significant effects demographically

1084
00:56:16.720 --> 00:56:18.920
<v Speaker 4>that are related to what's happening in the labour market.

1085
00:56:19.140 --> 00:56:19.540
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

1086
00:56:19.660 --> 00:56:21.040
<v Speaker 3>And now, next question.

1087
00:56:21.040 --> 00:56:21.260
<v Speaker 3>OK, next question.

1088
00:56:21.260 --> 00:56:22.540
<v Speaker 3>No, please, you've had to go.

1089
00:56:22.900 --> 00:56:24.700
<v Speaker 3>Should we still go on working?

1090
00:56:24.900 --> 00:56:26.040
<v Speaker 3>Is it sensible to...

1091
00:56:26.040 --> 00:56:27.400
<v Chair>Take the question from the top.

1092
00:56:27.400 --> 00:56:31.900
<v Audience>I would like to ask Amy to briefly outline

1093
00:56:31.900 --> 00:56:35.840
<v Audience>some of those policy processes that you were suggesting

1094
00:56:35.840 --> 00:56:38.700
<v Audience>might address some of the issues that you brought up.

1095
00:56:38.880 --> 00:56:39.220
<v Speaker 6>Great.

1096
00:56:40.160 --> 00:56:41.860
<v Speaker 6>One, employment policy.

1097
00:56:42.460 --> 00:56:44.300
<v Speaker 6>One of the things that we saw in the US

1098
00:56:44.300 --> 00:56:47.020
<v Speaker 6>in the downturn of the economy post 9-11,

1099
00:56:47.840 --> 00:56:50.720
<v Speaker 6>so many people who worked in service sector industries

1100
00:56:50.720 --> 00:56:53.560
<v Speaker 6>that were laid off and found themselves ineligible for unemployment

1101
00:56:53.560 --> 00:56:56.140
<v Speaker 6>because they were working either below full-time

1102
00:56:56.140 --> 00:56:57.380
<v Speaker 6>or were working on some kind of job,

1103
00:56:57.380 --> 00:56:58.320
<v Speaker 6>or were working on some kind of contingent basis.

1104
00:56:58.520 --> 00:57:00.760
<v Speaker 6>So I don't want to oversimplify the problem,

1105
00:57:00.880 --> 00:57:03.120
<v Speaker 6>but we would solve a huge number of problems

1106
00:57:03.120 --> 00:57:05.220
<v Speaker 6>if we redefined our unemployment insurance system

1107
00:57:05.220 --> 00:57:07.500
<v Speaker 6>to cover the new ways people go to work.

1108
00:57:08.000 --> 00:57:10.180
<v Speaker 6>The second thing is that we need to be able to combine

1109
00:57:10.180 --> 00:57:13.340
<v Speaker 6>our employment policy system with our workforce development system.

1110
00:57:14.040 --> 00:57:15.880
<v Speaker 6>They can't be two separate things.

1111
00:57:16.080 --> 00:57:19.360
<v Speaker 6>And in the US, they are very de-linked

1112
00:57:19.360 --> 00:57:20.540
<v Speaker 6>and very separated from one another.

1113
00:57:20.720 --> 00:57:24.340
<v Speaker 6>Given the fact that people move in and out of their jobs so frequently,

1114
00:57:24.520 --> 00:57:26.480
<v Speaker 6>we need to be able to have retraining

1115
00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:31.340
<v Speaker 6>and skills upgrading connected to the benefit of unemployment insurance.

1116
00:57:32.180 --> 00:57:34.340
<v Speaker 6>The second thing is in the area of collective bargaining.

1117
00:57:34.780 --> 00:57:37.540
<v Speaker 6>We have a body of law that regulates the relationship

1118
00:57:37.540 --> 00:57:42.560
<v Speaker 6>between labor and employer based on the way people worked 60 years ago.

1119
00:57:43.260 --> 00:57:45.760
<v Speaker 6>Communities of interest or the appropriate bodies

1120
00:57:45.760 --> 00:57:49.280
<v Speaker 6>that are considered eligible to bargain with an employer

1121
00:57:49.280 --> 00:57:53.280
<v Speaker 6>are considered all those employees who work under one roof for an employer.

1122
00:57:53.560 --> 00:57:55.280
<v Speaker 6>And we know that's just not the case anymore.

1123
00:57:55.280 --> 00:57:57.160
<v Speaker 6>We know that people can work for an employer

1124
00:57:57.160 --> 00:57:58.680
<v Speaker 6>and be spread out around the globe.

1125
00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:01.500
<v Speaker 6>We know that people can be working under one roof

1126
00:58:01.500 --> 00:58:02.800
<v Speaker 6>and have multiple employers.

1127
00:58:03.040 --> 00:58:07.300
<v Speaker 6>And so redefining what communities of interest look like,

1128
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:10.700
<v Speaker 6>even as the employment contract becomes more and more individualized,

1129
00:58:11.500 --> 00:58:14.720
<v Speaker 6>would make a huge difference so that people could once again begin to bargain,

1130
00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:16.920
<v Speaker 6>even if they're working under a different set of arrangements.

1131
00:58:17.860 --> 00:58:20.480
<v Speaker 6>So employment policies, workforce development policies,

1132
00:58:20.880 --> 00:58:25.200
<v Speaker 6>labor laws, all of those things need to be rethought.

1133
00:58:25.200 --> 00:58:27.800
<v Speaker 6>to accommodate the ways people work today.

1134
00:58:29.020 --> 00:58:32.840
<v Chair>Amy, we can change the labor laws and so on,

1135
00:58:32.880 --> 00:58:35.440
<v Chair>and there's a lot of debate about that in the US as there is in Australia,

1136
00:58:35.600 --> 00:58:37.740
<v Chair>but maybe Barbara can come in as well.

1137
00:58:37.820 --> 00:58:39.820
<v Chair>Why are people leaving unions in droves?

1138
00:58:40.420 --> 00:58:43.120
<v Chair>It's one of the questions that I think we have to confront.

1139
00:58:43.300 --> 00:58:45.500
<v Chair>I mean, a lot of the issues that we've talked about

1140
00:58:45.500 --> 00:58:47.220
<v Chair>are things that are potentially negotiable,

1141
00:58:47.720 --> 00:58:52.120
<v Chair>and people aren't looking naturally to unions to help resolve those problems.

1142
00:58:52.620 --> 00:58:54.820
<v Speaker 4>Well, the Australian explanation is that,

1143
00:58:54.820 --> 00:58:58.340
<v Speaker 4>a very significant part of that shift in de-unionization

1144
00:58:58.340 --> 00:59:00.340
<v Speaker 4>is to do with the restructuring of the labor market

1145
00:59:00.340 --> 00:59:04.140
<v Speaker 4>and the shift out of vehicle plants into the kind of employment

1146
00:59:04.140 --> 00:59:07.600
<v Speaker 4>where unions have never been and there's no natural culture,

1147
00:59:07.700 --> 00:59:10.000
<v Speaker 4>and they're very, very difficult in smaller workplaces,

1148
00:59:10.020 --> 00:59:13.080
<v Speaker 4>which is increasingly the Australian workplace, to unionize.

1149
00:59:13.160 --> 00:59:16.940
<v Speaker 4>And there are also issues within the way the labor movement in Australia has worked,

1150
00:59:17.020 --> 00:59:20.520
<v Speaker 4>and I think in America as well, which discourage some from joining,

1151
00:59:20.600 --> 00:59:22.240
<v Speaker 4>and that's why there's a big debate underway

1152
00:59:22.240 --> 00:59:24.460
<v Speaker 4>about new ways of working within the labor movement.

1153
00:59:24.520 --> 00:59:24.800
<v Speaker 4>That's right.

1154
00:59:24.820 --> 00:59:25.240
<v Speaker 4>That's very important.

1155
00:59:26.680 --> 00:59:28.860
<v Chair>Okay, another question from the middle of the floor.

1156
00:59:29.100 --> 00:59:29.660
<v Speaker 9>Hi, thanks.

1157
00:59:29.840 --> 00:59:31.520
<v Speaker 9>First of all, thanks to all the speakers.

1158
00:59:31.680 --> 00:59:34.520
<v Speaker 9>There was a really good range of topics covered very eloquently.

1159
00:59:35.260 --> 00:59:37.420
<v Speaker 9>I was extremely disappointed, however,

1160
00:59:37.460 --> 00:59:43.420
<v Speaker 9>in an almost total lack of so-called developing country perspectives in the talk,

1161
00:59:43.540 --> 00:59:46.480
<v Speaker 9>especially because labor issues are high on the agenda

1162
00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:48.620
<v Speaker 9>of many people in developing countries

1163
00:59:48.620 --> 00:59:52.700
<v Speaker 9>and many NGOs based in Australia that work predominantly

1164
00:59:52.700 --> 00:59:54.800
<v Speaker 9>on behalf of workers in developing countries.

1165
00:59:54.800 --> 00:59:58.160
<v Speaker 9>So I've got two questions perhaps for Barbara

1166
00:59:58.160 --> 01:00:00.980
<v Speaker 9>and maybe one that Amy could also perhaps respond to.

1167
01:00:01.780 --> 01:00:05.840
<v Speaker 9>I guess basically I'd like to know what your views are on the forces

1168
01:00:05.840 --> 01:00:09.440
<v Speaker 9>that are shaping the labor conditions for workers, women and otherwise,

1169
01:00:09.640 --> 01:00:11.360
<v Speaker 9>in so-called developing countries.

1170
01:00:12.180 --> 01:00:15.120
<v Speaker 9>Perhaps you could talk about the countries in our own region,

1171
01:00:15.200 --> 01:00:15.900
<v Speaker 9>in the Asia Pacific.

1172
01:00:16.720 --> 01:00:19.000
<v Speaker 9>And following on from that, how are we as Australians

1173
01:00:19.980 --> 01:00:22.860
<v Speaker 9>to become informed about those issues and to become empowered

1174
01:00:22.860 --> 01:00:23.980
<v Speaker 9>to actually take action?

1175
01:00:24.580 --> 01:00:26.100
<v Speaker 9>Given that some of the forces,

1176
01:00:27.560 --> 01:00:29.740
<v Speaker 9>the policies made by the World Trade Organization

1177
01:00:29.740 --> 01:00:33.980
<v Speaker 9>do seem quite far removed from our day-to-day experiences

1178
01:00:33.980 --> 01:00:36.280
<v Speaker 9>as workers and as citizens in Australia.

1179
01:00:36.600 --> 01:00:40.060
<v Speaker 9>And if there is time, I suppose I'd throw the question to Amy.

1180
01:00:40.180 --> 01:00:43.000
<v Speaker 9>You come from the country that invented the WTO.

1181
01:00:43.800 --> 01:00:47.000
<v Speaker 9>I guess I'd like some kind of American perspective, perhaps,

1182
01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:53.400
<v Speaker 9>on those forces and how you as obviously someone engaged in unions,

1183
01:00:53.400 --> 01:00:55.700
<v Speaker 9>are concerned about developing country workers.

1184
01:00:55.980 --> 01:00:56.300
<v Speaker 9>Thanks.

1185
01:00:56.500 --> 01:00:57.940
<v Chair>Okay. Do you want to go first, Barbara?

1186
01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:00.800
<v Speaker 4>Well, we live in a global labor market

1187
01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:03.480
<v Speaker 4>and the countries that are part of our region

1188
01:01:03.480 --> 01:01:06.940
<v Speaker 4>are increasingly the rungs on the lower levels

1189
01:01:06.940 --> 01:01:08.560
<v Speaker 4>of the international labor hierarchy,

1190
01:01:08.760 --> 01:01:12.480
<v Speaker 4>which are used to shape the conditions of Australian workers

1191
01:01:12.480 --> 01:01:14.260
<v Speaker 4>and increasingly against each other.

1192
01:01:14.360 --> 01:01:18.460
<v Speaker 4>And China is, of course, the major significant new player

1193
01:01:18.460 --> 01:01:22.340
<v Speaker 4>which will significantly reshape the terms of labor around the globe.

1194
01:01:22.720 --> 01:01:23.380
<v Speaker 4>There are other countries,

1195
01:01:23.380 --> 01:01:25.900
<v Speaker 4>there are many millions of men and women

1196
01:01:25.900 --> 01:01:28.060
<v Speaker 4>who will come out of rural China in the next 10 years

1197
01:01:28.060 --> 01:01:31.340
<v Speaker 4>and will change the conditions of employment around the globe.

1198
01:01:31.560 --> 01:01:34.420
<v Speaker 4>And I think that's an issue that a lot of labor market international analysts

1199
01:01:34.420 --> 01:01:35.620
<v Speaker 4>are turning their attention to.

1200
01:01:35.800 --> 01:01:39.600
<v Speaker 4>So you cannot by any means consider the state of labor in Australia

1201
01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:42.340
<v Speaker 4>in a way which is disconnected from the international picture.

1202
01:01:42.560 --> 01:01:45.060
<v Speaker 4>And I think that's why an international movement,

1203
01:01:45.200 --> 01:01:47.840
<v Speaker 4>especially in the labor movement connected to the community,

1204
01:01:48.020 --> 01:01:53.300
<v Speaker 4>is pivotal to make the issues that affect rural workers in Indonesia,

1205
01:01:53.380 --> 01:01:55.280
<v Speaker 4>with the conditions of employment in Australia.

1206
01:01:56.340 --> 01:01:58.280
<v Speaker 6>I don't want to defend the WTO.

1207
01:01:58.380 --> 01:01:59.380
<v Speaker 6>I had nothing to do with it.

1208
01:01:59.520 --> 01:02:00.440
<v Speaker 6>I mean, as much as I'd like to.

1209
01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:06.340
<v Speaker 6>And so, anyway, let me say really quickly

1210
01:02:07.520 --> 01:02:11.700
<v Speaker 6>the challenge, I believe, as it relates to U.S. unions

1211
01:02:11.700 --> 01:02:15.480
<v Speaker 6>leveraging their political power to impact trade policy around the globe.

1212
01:02:15.860 --> 01:02:18.200
<v Speaker 6>First, U.S. unions were very slow to the table

1213
01:02:18.200 --> 01:02:23.020
<v Speaker 6>to even take a position or have a thought-out position on trade.

1214
01:02:23.020 --> 01:02:26.040
<v Speaker 6>I mean, as recent as 1992, we were still debating,

1215
01:02:26.160 --> 01:02:27.380
<v Speaker 6>and I think we still are as a movement,

1216
01:02:27.560 --> 01:02:31.520
<v Speaker 6>are we going to oppose trade under any set of conditions,

1217
01:02:31.640 --> 01:02:34.460
<v Speaker 6>or are we willing to enter into a discussion around under what terms and conditions?

1218
01:02:34.900 --> 01:02:37.820
<v Speaker 6>I believe that the historical scorecard,

1219
01:02:37.960 --> 01:02:40.060
<v Speaker 6>zero losses on their side of the aisle,

1220
01:02:40.180 --> 01:02:44.520
<v Speaker 6>and that our goal is to harness the forces that are remaking the economy,

1221
01:02:44.640 --> 01:02:47.720
<v Speaker 6>not to try to say globalization shouldn't take place.

1222
01:02:47.740 --> 01:02:48.500
<v Speaker 6>It's an inevitability.

1223
01:02:48.660 --> 01:02:53.000
<v Speaker 6>We're not going to stop integrating our economies around the globe.

1224
01:02:53.000 --> 01:02:54.560
<v Speaker 6>We're not going to stop working with one another around the world.

1225
01:02:55.100 --> 01:02:59.560
<v Speaker 6>And so we only are recently to a point

1226
01:02:59.560 --> 01:03:02.040
<v Speaker 6>where we're even beginning to have a conversation about

1227
01:03:03.220 --> 01:03:05.680
<v Speaker 6>under what set of conditions should trade take place.

1228
01:03:06.360 --> 01:03:08.040
<v Speaker 6>And I think the challenge has been

1229
01:03:08.640 --> 01:03:12.020
<v Speaker 6>you still have a group of unions that see trade policy

1230
01:03:12.020 --> 01:03:14.700
<v Speaker 6>or advocating a policy to protect their interests

1231
01:03:14.700 --> 01:03:18.340
<v Speaker 6>as opposed to trying to figure out how you upwardly harmonize working conditions for all people.

1232
01:03:18.580 --> 01:03:21.560
<v Speaker 6>And so there's sort of a couple of different factions and conversations that are going on.

1233
01:03:23.000 --> 01:03:28.680
<v Speaker 6>And I think that if we could harness all of our political capital into one strategy,

1234
01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:30.180
<v Speaker 6>and obviously it takes many,

1235
01:03:30.260 --> 01:03:32.160
<v Speaker 6>but to sort of oversimplify the conversation,

1236
01:03:32.680 --> 01:03:35.360
<v Speaker 6>it would be to connect to trade policy

1237
01:03:36.060 --> 01:03:38.980
<v Speaker 6>the rights for workers around the globe to have freedom of association.

1238
01:03:39.260 --> 01:03:41.100
<v Speaker 6>And I think that's more important than a global minimum wage

1239
01:03:41.100 --> 01:03:45.040
<v Speaker 6>because I think, one, I think the global minimum wage doesn't work for the South

1240
01:03:45.040 --> 01:03:46.240
<v Speaker 6>and for developing countries.

1241
01:03:46.500 --> 01:03:51.880
<v Speaker 6>And if you ask people if a $2 an hour job is better than a no dollar an hour job,

1242
01:03:51.940 --> 01:03:52.980
<v Speaker 6>they'll tell you $2 an hour job is better than $2 an hour job.

1243
01:03:53.000 --> 01:03:57.240
<v Speaker 6>But if you ask people, is a $2 an hour job that your employer tells you here

1244
01:03:57.240 --> 01:03:58.600
<v Speaker 6>is how much you're going to get paid

1245
01:03:58.600 --> 01:04:01.560
<v Speaker 6>or a job where you get to bargain over the terms and conditions of your employment,

1246
01:04:01.680 --> 01:04:04.500
<v Speaker 6>what's better, it's clear what the answer is on that.

1247
01:04:04.720 --> 01:04:10.100
<v Speaker 6>And so I think where we need to go is, at least in the industrialized world,

1248
01:04:10.220 --> 01:04:13.880
<v Speaker 6>labor needs to really come together as a worldwide movement in the first world

1249
01:04:13.880 --> 01:04:17.320
<v Speaker 6>and advocate for the rights to organize in our own countries,

1250
01:04:17.420 --> 01:04:18.600
<v Speaker 6>which are being whittled away,

1251
01:04:18.820 --> 01:04:22.560
<v Speaker 6>and the rights for workers to be able to have freedom of association around the globe.

1252
01:04:22.560 --> 01:04:25.240
<v Speaker 6>And I think that if we were able to achieve that in my lifetime,

1253
01:04:26.540 --> 01:04:27.560
<v Speaker 6>that would be awesome.

1254
01:04:27.640 --> 01:04:29.900
<v Speaker 6>And I think that is, again, more important than trying to establish

1255
01:04:29.900 --> 01:04:34.020
<v Speaker 6>some kind of regulatory framework for a minimum wage around the globe.

1256
01:04:41.140 --> 01:04:45.700
<v Speaker 7>I'd just like to add to that that the problem with the world trade rules

1257
01:04:45.700 --> 01:04:50.340
<v Speaker 7>is they are a precise inversion of what we need for fair global trade.

1258
01:04:50.460 --> 01:04:52.540
<v Speaker 7>They're actually rules which enforce unfair global trade.

1259
01:04:52.540 --> 01:04:58.400
<v Speaker 7>And it seems to me that what we need is a fair trade organization,

1260
01:04:58.760 --> 01:05:03.680
<v Speaker 7>an organization, yes, of member states, which sets trade rules.

1261
01:05:03.800 --> 01:05:06.860
<v Speaker 7>The only thing worse than having the wrong trade rules is having no trade rules at all

1262
01:05:06.860 --> 01:05:09.560
<v Speaker 7>because then it's just simply piracy and plunder.

1263
01:05:09.840 --> 01:05:16.020
<v Speaker 7>But one which tries slowly to push standards up

1264
01:05:16.020 --> 01:05:20.320
<v Speaker 7>rather than effectively enforcing downward pressure on standards.

1265
01:05:20.500 --> 01:05:22.320
<v Speaker 7>And one of the key features, I feel,

1266
01:05:22.320 --> 01:05:26.880
<v Speaker 7>of a fair trade organization would be that it becomes a licensing authority

1267
01:05:27.360 --> 01:05:29.420
<v Speaker 7>for anyone trying to trade internationally.

1268
01:05:29.960 --> 01:05:32.360
<v Speaker 7>It would be a bit like health and safety inspectors

1269
01:05:32.360 --> 01:05:33.680
<v Speaker 7>who go around to your premises and say,

1270
01:05:33.760 --> 01:05:37.280
<v Speaker 7>you've got asbestos in your walls, you've got two weeks to sort this out,

1271
01:05:37.400 --> 01:05:38.600
<v Speaker 7>otherwise we're closing you down.

1272
01:05:38.840 --> 01:05:43.020
<v Speaker 7>You say to these corporations, right, you have to demonstrate to us

1273
01:05:43.020 --> 01:05:45.640
<v Speaker 7>that you're not employing slaves in your plantations,

1274
01:05:45.740 --> 01:05:46.960
<v Speaker 7>you're not using banned pesticides,

1275
01:05:47.300 --> 01:05:49.740
<v Speaker 7>you're not having your workers having their arms ripped off in your factories.

1276
01:05:50.080 --> 01:05:51.520
<v Speaker 7>And if you can demonstrate that,

1277
01:05:51.520 --> 01:05:53.960
<v Speaker 7>then you have a license to trade internationally.

1278
01:05:54.260 --> 01:05:55.860
<v Speaker 7>If you can't, you don't have a license.

1279
01:05:56.340 --> 01:06:03.040
<v Speaker 7>And that way, what we see within the voluntary fair trade movement today,

1280
01:06:03.160 --> 01:06:06.680
<v Speaker 7>which of course represents a tiny proportion of international trade,

1281
01:06:06.980 --> 01:06:08.160
<v Speaker 7>then becomes generalized.

1282
01:06:08.600 --> 01:06:11.760
<v Speaker 7>All international trade then has to be fair trade.

1283
01:06:11.860 --> 01:06:14.900
<v Speaker 7>The only corporations which survive at the international level

1284
01:06:14.900 --> 01:06:16.200
<v Speaker 7>are the ethical corporations.

1285
01:06:16.980 --> 01:06:19.380
<v Speaker 7>And we sort of reverse the whole thing.

1286
01:06:19.640 --> 01:06:21.500
<v Speaker 7>But just one small thing.

1287
01:06:21.520 --> 01:06:26.980
<v Speaker 7>The real threat now is not so much coming from the World Trade Organization,

1288
01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:29.580
<v Speaker 7>it's coming from the US, which the questioner said

1289
01:06:29.580 --> 01:06:32.600
<v Speaker 7>definitely pushed the formation of the World Trade Organization.

1290
01:06:32.820 --> 01:06:35.320
<v Speaker 7>Now Bush is trying to destroy the World Trade Organization.

1291
01:06:35.660 --> 01:06:37.520
<v Speaker 7>He's trying to destroy it not because it's unfair,

1292
01:06:37.840 --> 01:06:39.960
<v Speaker 7>but because it's not unfair enough.

1293
01:06:48.220 --> 01:06:51.520
<v Speaker 7>And what he wants to replace it with,

1294
01:06:51.660 --> 01:06:53.580
<v Speaker 7>and watch it because this is coming to Australia,

1295
01:06:53.820 --> 01:06:56.620
<v Speaker 7>what he wants to replace it with is unilateral bargaining

1296
01:06:56.620 --> 01:07:01.380
<v Speaker 7>with one country after another to set the terms on American,

1297
01:07:01.720 --> 01:07:04.180
<v Speaker 7>well, for what the American corporations want,

1298
01:07:04.420 --> 01:07:08.380
<v Speaker 7>to set the terms of trade so that they're even harsher,

1299
01:07:08.380 --> 01:07:12.300
<v Speaker 7>even crueler, even less fair than those currently set

1300
01:07:12.300 --> 01:07:13.560
<v Speaker 7>by the World Trade Organization.

1301
01:07:18.680 --> 01:07:21.140
<v Chair>A question at the top, if you can keep it short, please.

1302
01:07:21.220 --> 01:07:21.460
<v Chair>Thank you.

1303
01:07:22.080 --> 01:07:25.860
<v Audience>I'd just like to ask Amy a question which is relevant to Adelaide,

1304
01:07:25.920 --> 01:07:29.040
<v Audience>is the rise of the call center in the last few years.

1305
01:07:29.440 --> 01:07:31.800
<v Audience>Adelaide's actually been described as call center capital.

1306
01:07:32.180 --> 01:07:35.800
<v Audience>I've also heard them referred to as battery hen environments.

1307
01:07:38.380 --> 01:07:39.360
<v Audience>What else have they been called?

1308
01:07:40.020 --> 01:07:42.140
<v Audience>The coal mines of the 21st century.

1309
01:07:42.240 --> 01:07:44.860
<v Audience>I'm just wondering, in your U.S. experience,

1310
01:07:45.520 --> 01:07:47.460
<v Audience>have you done any research on call centers?

1311
01:07:47.620 --> 01:07:49.220
<v Audience>Do you have any concerns about them?

1312
01:07:50.900 --> 01:07:53.140
<v Audience>What is the union movement doing about them?

1313
01:07:53.860 --> 01:07:56.500
<v Speaker 6>Well, they're moving offshore increasingly.

1314
01:07:57.340 --> 01:08:04.760
<v Speaker 6>I mentioned this yesterday that India is a huge recipient,

1315
01:08:05.040 --> 01:08:08.360
<v Speaker 6>and call centers, data processing, kind of low-level centers,

1316
01:08:08.360 --> 01:08:08.980
<v Speaker 6>software production.

1317
01:08:09.200 --> 01:08:12.780
<v Speaker 6>It's an $11 billion industry in India.

1318
01:08:13.540 --> 01:08:18.300
<v Speaker 6>And I was mentioning that the only challenge they have is how to train

1319
01:08:18.300 --> 01:08:20.820
<v Speaker 6>Indian workers to lose their Indian accent.

1320
01:08:21.040 --> 01:08:25.480
<v Speaker 6>And so they make them sit in front of TV and listen to reruns of American TV's

1321
01:08:25.480 --> 01:08:27.680
<v Speaker 6>Honest to God Truth so that they can lose their accent,

1322
01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:31.440
<v Speaker 6>which is, in my opinion, in and of itself, a form of worker abuse.

1323
01:08:34.920 --> 01:08:36.300
<v Speaker 6>So let me say that.

1324
01:08:36.420 --> 01:08:37.360
<v Speaker 6>While it's a fast,

1325
01:08:38.260 --> 01:08:38.340
<v Speaker 6>fast,

1326
01:08:38.360 --> 01:08:39.080
<v Speaker 6>fast growing

1327
01:08:39.080 --> 01:08:40.060
<v Speaker 7>Watch the TV program.

1328
01:08:40.160 --> 01:08:41.480
<v Speaker 7>It's a form of worker abuse.

1329
01:08:43.280 --> 01:08:46.740
<v Speaker 6>So it's a fast, it's a fast growing sector of the economy.

1330
01:08:46.900 --> 01:08:52.340
<v Speaker 6>It's also a sector of the economy that's moving away from our shore and going around the globe.

1331
01:08:52.480 --> 01:08:56.540
<v Speaker 6>And you probably notice that whenever you call for support, whether it's tech support or, you know,

1332
01:08:56.560 --> 01:08:59.480
<v Speaker 6>you're making an airline reservation, then increasingly that's happening in other places.

1333
01:08:59.620 --> 01:09:03.320
<v Speaker 6>And, you know, to George's point about capital sort of roaming the globe for cheap labor,

1334
01:09:03.940 --> 01:09:08.340
<v Speaker 6>even in countries like India where there is sort of the beginning of a middle class in some ways,

1335
01:09:08.340 --> 01:09:11.360
<v Speaker 6>in some of these sectors, not wanting to lose their foreign investment,

1336
01:09:11.580 --> 01:09:14.340
<v Speaker 6>they are now looking for places to move the work to.

1337
01:09:14.460 --> 01:09:15.420
<v Speaker 6>There's a great story.

1338
01:09:15.620 --> 01:09:18.940
<v Speaker 6>A friend of mine owns a company called My Busy Internet in Ghana.

1339
01:09:19.920 --> 01:09:21.720
<v Speaker 6>And it's just a sanguinary a shell.

1340
01:09:21.900 --> 01:09:30.360
<v Speaker 6>He spent $60,000 to set a satellite up and he rents out space and infrastructure to companies and to small entrepreneurs.

1341
01:09:30.780 --> 01:09:37.240
<v Speaker 6>I'm not sure who those are in Ghana, but supposedly that's the other part of who he rents space out to.

1342
01:09:37.240 --> 01:09:45.740
<v Speaker 6>too. So one of his tenants in the facility is New York City. In New York City, when you take,

1343
01:09:45.840 --> 01:09:50.820
<v Speaker 6>it's not automated when you get a ticket. It gets, tickets get taken. They get sent back to the city.

1344
01:09:50.880 --> 01:09:56.200
<v Speaker 6>The city contracts out for data processing with a Philadelphia-based company. The Philadelphia-based

1345
01:09:56.200 --> 01:10:01.300
<v Speaker 6>company sends all of their work to Ghana, and then you've got folks in Ghana who are doing the data

1346
01:10:01.300 --> 01:10:07.920
<v Speaker 6>entry, and then they send, they upload the tickets back up to New York City. And so I guess the point

1347
01:10:07.920 --> 01:10:13.760
<v Speaker 6>to all of this is that it only makes the point even stronger that it's not just a problem for

1348
01:10:14.260 --> 01:10:18.560
<v Speaker 6>manufacturing jobs. It's service jobs, knowledge jobs really can be shipped all around the world,

1349
01:10:18.620 --> 01:10:22.860
<v Speaker 6>and if we can't figure out a way to rationalize it, then even those jobs that at one time were

1350
01:10:22.860 --> 01:10:26.140
<v Speaker 6>looked upon as sort of middle-income jobs. You know, we were told that when we lost our

1351
01:10:26.140 --> 01:10:30.200
<v Speaker 6>manufacturing base in the U.S., we would make them up with service jobs and knowledge jobs,

1352
01:10:30.280 --> 01:10:31.000
<v Speaker 6>that even those are

1353
01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:36.800
<v Speaker 6>moving offshore. So all I can say is that there's not a huge amount of organizing investment going

1354
01:10:36.800 --> 01:10:39.800
<v Speaker 6>on in the U.S. into that industry, because as it grows, it's also moving.

1355
01:10:44.760 --> 01:10:49.120
<v Chair>I've got time for one more short question, which I'll take.

1356
01:10:49.160 --> 01:10:52.380
<v Audience>This is a question for anyone who can answer it, anyone in the room.

1357
01:10:54.120 --> 01:10:59.520
<v Audience>I worked for a year and a half in the IT industry, and the skills and training I learned were those

1358
01:10:59.520 --> 01:10:59.820
<v Audience>of

1359
01:10:59.820 --> 01:11:00.160
<v Audience>a

1360
01:11:01.020 --> 01:11:06.340
<v Audience>what you could basically teach a monkey. Actually, you could probably, a monkey would do the job

1361
01:11:06.340 --> 01:11:15.620
<v Audience>better than I could do it. And my question is, what kind of work do we want? I mean, why should I

1362
01:11:15.620 --> 01:11:22.160
<v Audience>fight for my rights to be a better paid, trained monkey? The kind of work people are doing is the

1363
01:11:22.160 --> 01:11:29.720
<v Audience>work of trained monkeys, really. Factories, all this kind of work. I don't think for myself in my

1364
01:11:29.720 --> 01:11:30.080
<v Audience>job.

1365
01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:37.180
<v Audience>Nobody does. We follow the rules and the procedures of corporations and governments. Nobody has any

1366
01:11:37.180 --> 01:11:45.940
<v Audience>decision-making opportunities at all in these kinds of jobs. So why should we be doing shit work

1367
01:11:45.940 --> 01:11:49.600
<v Audience>and fighting to be trained monkeys?

1368
01:11:54.540 --> 01:11:56.000
<v Chair>Michael's going to have the first go at that.

1369
01:11:56.340 --> 01:12:00.640
<v Speaker 5>I don't have a clear answer.

1370
01:12:01.000 --> 01:12:11.720
<v Speaker 5>I think the answer to why we shouldn't, I mean, well, the answer's obvious because it's not commensurate with human dignity, but more

1371
01:12:13.620 --> 01:12:21.880
<v Speaker 5>encouragingly, what can be done about it? And there I do have an answer that I want to sort of piggyback a little bit on some of George's

1372
01:12:21.880 --> 01:12:29.860
<v Speaker 5>comments earlier when he was saying, you remember, that what a wise Australian government would do would be to plan, and he used the

1373
01:12:29.860 --> 01:12:30.520
<v Speaker 5>word in advance.

1374
01:12:31.000 --> 01:12:37.520
<v Speaker 5>He said, you know, we could do this for a new kind of labour market in which we could be inventive before we had to be on the back foot.

1375
01:12:37.720 --> 01:12:49.760
<v Speaker 5>Now, what all of that means, and it is answering your point, is that we need, three words, regulation, regulation, regulation.

1376
01:12:51.120 --> 01:13:00.980
<v Speaker 5>And we have a historical tradition of being extremely good at regulating labour markets, wisely, in a way that we can't do it in the

1377
01:13:01.000 --> 01:13:10.780
<v Speaker 5>way that does something which in today's climate is quite revolutionary, but which we do very well, which is making the economy work for the

1378
01:13:10.780 --> 01:13:13.880
<v Speaker 5>people instead of making the people work for the economy.

1379
01:13:14.100 --> 01:13:15.360
<v Speaker 5>We can do that again.

1380
01:13:15.880 --> 01:13:16.420
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.

1381
01:13:22.380 --> 01:13:27.120
<v Speaker 2>I don't think we should underestimate the labour potential of monkeys.

1382
01:13:28.520 --> 01:13:29.760
<v Speaker 2>Let me just say that.

1383
01:13:29.880 --> 01:13:30.800
<v Speaker 2>Because, you know, they say,

1384
01:13:31.000 --> 01:13:35.980
<v Speaker 2>if you have a bunch of monkeys and you leave them in a room long enough with typewriters, they'll produce Hamlet.

1385
01:13:38.980 --> 01:13:40.160
<v Speaker 2>For what it's worth.

1386
01:13:42.800 --> 01:13:43.280
<v Chair>Okay.

1387
01:13:43.440 --> 01:13:44.980
<v Chair>I think it's time to wind it up.

1388
01:13:45.020 --> 01:13:53.580
<v Chair>My favourite quote that came out of the various presentations today, I think, was Amy's about capital does not have a monopoly on innovation.

1389
01:13:54.180 --> 01:13:58.120
<v Chair>And certainly this festival idea has shown that it certainly doesn't.

1390
01:13:59.420 --> 01:14:00.980
<v Chair>How we talk.

1391
01:14:01.000 --> 01:14:02.060
<v Chair>Talk less and take action.

1392
01:14:02.100 --> 01:14:02.900
<v Chair>That's the next step.

1393
01:14:04.580 --> 01:14:08.540
<v Chair>So, you know, let's let's all go out there and start doing it.

1394
01:14:08.580 --> 01:14:08.800
<v Chair>I think.

1395
01:14:08.960 --> 01:14:09.780
<v Chair>Thanks very much.