Australian workers walking off the job in droves under Abbott government

THE number of Australian workers downing tools has quadrupled for the first three months of the Abbott Government.

Unhappy workers ... new Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals an 82 per cent drop

THE number of Australian workers downing tools has quadrupled for the first three months of the Abbott Government.

New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals an 82 per cent drop in productivity in October to December, compared to the last days of the Labor government in April to June.

More than 36,000 days were lost to industrial action during these three months — the first full reporting period since Tony Abbott was sworn in on September 18 — compared to 19,800 under Labor.

This is almost 400 people downing tools for a full day, every day, in protest of job losses and threatened job security.

Education, health and social welfare employees were responsible for almost half of the disputes and productivity losses followed by construction and transport workers.

Nationally, industrial action is estimated to cost employers $151,000 each day with Tony Abbott at the helm, but the number of disputes and cost could be higher than the data suggests.

“The scope of the survey is disputes where 10 or more working days have been lost in total,” said Tomas Austen, from the Industrial Disputes Collection at ABS.

“Small disputes are out of scope.”

Brendan O’Connor, the Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, was critical of the government’s engagement with businesses to secure Australian jobs, despite job security being the number one issue for Australians.

“Without a job, you can’t feed your kids, you can’t have a decent life and therefore people are anxious,” said Mr O’Connor.

But Ged Kearney, president of the ACTU, said disputes were still low compared to the time of the Howard Government.

“Workers will always reserve their right to take industrial action but these figures show that the current system is working and hasn’t led to an outbreak of strikes as some commentators irresponsibly predicted,” he said.

Minister for Education, Senator Eric Abetz, was unable to comment.

###