Tony Abbott knows WorkChoices is electoral poison. So much so that he’s distancing the government from the Productivity Commission’s recent WorkChoices-like recommendations.

It’s a report “to government, not from government”, he spluttered. But the Productivity Commission’s draft workplace relations report has the government’s name – and that of the employers – written all over it.

Full of weasel words as it is, the report has just the right formula for the government and bosses. It sets up the attacks on both the strong and vulnerable amongst workers, and gives the bosses increased powers and rights.

The industrial relations system is working, says the report, but there are still problems, despite the wide array of laws and regulatory bodies to control unions.

Because unions still win disputes through an “excessive use of bargaining power”, strike laws need tightening, according to the report. Economic harm to a single company should be grounds to stop a strike, and the short rolling stoppages used by many unions should be curtailed. The commission also wants to shake up the Fair Work Commission, making it more responsive to employer demands.

The lowest paid and most vulnerable are next in line in a number of key areas – penalty rates, enterprise contracts and the minimum wage – with more to come.

The report grudgingly acknowledges that there should be a minimum wage, but the prospect of dropping it in areas with high unemployment, as occurs in US “low wage” states, dangles promisingly before its eyes.

While it’s “not practical” to do this now, the call is for slower and lower minimum wage rises in future, with Fair Work able to cut or stop an increase.

You’d have to be Blind Freddy not to notice that the ruling class has penalty rates in its sights. Hospitality and retail bosses have been particularly feral, despite the fact that many don’t pay penalty rates – though they are legally obliged to – as Grill’d workers recently found out. Amongst all the whining and whinging, you’d never guess that retail and hospitality have been economy growth areas and that the share of profits going to employers has been escalating in the last decade.

The Productivity Commission’s plan is to bring Sunday penalty rates “into line” with Saturday rates in the retail, entertainment and hospitality sectors. A recent study by the McKell Institute found that in regional Australia alone, penalty rate cuts would hand the bosses an extra $690 million a year.

Then we come to “enterprise contracts”. These are an attempted re-run of WorkChoices’ hated Australian Workplace Agreements. The suggested plan is that employers download a template from Fair Work, change the award conditions for something else and present it to their new employee on a take it or leave it basis. Then send it in to Fair Work. Job done. The enterprise contract doesn’t have to be approved and isn’t scrutinised unless an employee later brings a complaint to the commission. Workers are stuck with it for 12 months before they can “opt out”.

None of this agenda is new. This Abbott-led Coalition has had its knives out against workers from the beginning. But in the wake of the Productivity Commission report, rather than cop the electoral backlash, they argue it’s the Fair Work Commission’s job.

Go to Fair Work, Abbott told bosses on radio after the draft report was released, “put in a submission and” (nod, nod, wink, wink), “let’s hope the Fair Work Commission is alert to the need to maximise employment and maximise economic activity”.

From the unions there have been scathing attacks, and the ACTU’s Dave Oliver talking about “rising up” against the government. But his fiery words fall flat when he adds that unions “will fight them in the marginal electorates and ultimately at the ballot box”.

What is needed is responses more like that from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association’s Brett Holmes, who told the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 August:

“It might be the shop assistants’ or baristas’ penalty rates under attack today, but it won’t be long before nurses and midwives’ penalty rates are under threat … We will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with workers in other industries …”

It’s this kind of solidarity that will strengthen our side for the fight we have to have. It has happened recently with Hutchison workers in Sydney and Brisbane and with warehouse workers in Melbourne, where solidarity with their fight means we can hit the bosses where it hurts.

That’s the only message the ruling class will listen to. We have to be prepared to deliver it.