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By John Tully
Prime Minister John Howard returned from his US junket last month singing the praises of 'Americanisation'.
He has studied the figures, he tells us, and they show that further deregulation of the labour market would create jobs. He wants to open a 'debate' on unemployment, he says.
Workers need not hold their breath. We've already seen the disastrous effects of his slash and burn policies, which have thrown thousands out of work.
Yet, on the surface, it does look like Johnny Howard has a case. Officially, the unemployment rates for Australia and the US are around 8.8% and 4.8% respectively.
However, we should always remember Benjamin Disraeli's adage that there are 'Lies, damned lies and statistics' - particularly when we are dealing with big business's tame politicians. Because he is so keen on cutting wages, Howard has overlooked some other statistics which damn Americanisation as a model.
The major reason for the apparently much lower unemployment figures in the US is that a huge proportion of the US workforce is in prison or living off the proceeds of crime.
At the end of 1995, nearly 2.8% of all adult US residents - 5.3 million people - were in prison or otherwise caught up in the criminal justice system. This amounts to 4% of the workforce! In comparison, around 17,000 people are in prison in Australia - about 0.2% of the workforce. Further, as reported by John Legge in the Financial Review in June, 'three percent of the US workforce live off the proceeds of crime, known to the population census but not to the labour market. America would be a better place if this group of people were employed, although the unemployment statistics would not be so attractive.'
These facts blow Howard's argument out of the water; but he simply ignores them because they don't help his vicious New Right agenda, which is to slash workers' living standards and working conditions in order to boost profit rates. His 'concern' for the unemployed is just hypocrisy. There is another angle to the prison business too. Many gaols are privatised in the US, with lobbyists pressuring federal and state legislatures for harsher laws and stiffer sentences to boost prison populations - and profits for the private operators. We have started down the same road here, with US 'corrections corporations' rushing in to run prisons. Simultaneously, there are examples of cheap prison labour undercutting 'free' labour, particularly in the electrical components industry.
Workers need Howard's 'Americanisation' like a hole in the head.