Howard's Workchoices screws workers

"My employment conditions are better than ever under Workchoices
-I've even granted myself a pay rise or two!"

Griffith University business school's Professor David Peetz has conducted an analysis of workplace data for the first 10 months of John Howard's so-called 'Workchoices' scheme. From the SMH:

He found real wages for full-time adults fell by 1.1 per cent in the six months to August, which he described as a "remarkable occurrence during the tightest labour market in 30 years".

The study showed nearly 20,000 workers a month had permanently lost their award coverage after signing Australian workplace agreements and other non-union agreements, which can remove formerly protected conditions such as overtime, penalty rates and rest breaks.

[...]

While employment had increased, Professor Peetz said this was unrelated to the abolition of unfair dismissal laws under the laws. He said trend employment growth of 2.4 per cent during the first 10 months of the laws was noticeably weaker than the 3.4 per cent growth after the Keating government introduced unfair dismissal laws in 1994.