A big year for IR? We’ll drink to that

A 1970-style beer strike in Brisbane is a symbol we’re moving back towards the bad old days of IR.

Whenever I have talked to SmartCompany’s industrial relations expert Peter Vitale about increases in strike action in the last few years, he usually says that we shouldn’t get too worried. 

“It’s not as if we’re going back to the bad old days of beer strikes at Christmas,” he was fond of saying.

So this morning when I rang Peter to tell him that workers at the XXXX brewery in Brisbane were planning industrial action, he could only laugh.

As Peter wrote a few weeks ago, 2012 is looking as a big year for industrial action, as the unions increasingly flex the new muscle they have gained under the Fair Work Act.

He says this week’s beer strike is a confirmation of his view.

“That fact that we have a traditional 1970s beer strike is probably an ironic indication that we are going back from whence we came.”

To the average SME employer, the reasons for the strike look faintly ridiculous. The union involved, United Voice, is angry at a plan by brewery owner Lion Nathan to subject employees to individual performance reviews and base the payment of bonuses on these reviews.

State secretary Gary Bullock told The Australian workers were particularly angry about a plan to pay these bonuses based on whether or not the worker demonstrated “good behaviour.”

“It’s outrageous that management’s value judgments about character could put a worker’s income at risk.”

Exactly what is included in “good behaviour” is not clear, but the general principle of managers having the discretion to reward who they want with bonuses is pretty important to many SME employers.

However, Peter Vitale says individual bonuses are actually reasonably rare in unionised workplaces, where employers and employees have traditionally made bonuses applicable to the whole workforce or large groups within that workforce.

In that light, Lion Nathan is trying to put a big change in place and the union angst is probably not surprising.

Not surprising, but not a good look for Labor either.

While we need to be careful not to get dragged into wild claims about the rise of industrial action under FairWork – for example, it should be noted that while days lost to disputes rose substantially last quarter, this had a lot to do with disputes within the Coalition-controlled NSW State Government – a beer strike at Christmas will take many people back to an age of bitter industrial fights.

Next year’s Fair Work review is going to become more important as the months go by.