Victorian Trades Hall Council. The voice of Victorian workers since 1856.

• Inside Trades Hall
•  > Secretary's Report
•  > 2009 Archives

The fairness of new IR Laws is being tested

24 September 2009
Brian Boyd, VTHC Secretary

Recent events underscore the need for workers to be wary of where the Rudd and Gillard IR laws are leading to. The Award Modernisation process; the Liberals and Employer Associations putting the possible return of AWA’s out there for the 2010 federal election and how some recent bargaining disputes highlight continuing difficulties for workers in achieving reasonable results collectively, illustrates this point clearly.

Early in the piece, the SDA (Shop Assistants Union) was far from impressed about the progress of Award Modernisation in the supermarket and retail sectors. A key union figure even went so far as to describe the federal IR Minister and Deputy Prime Minister as being “a weak link,” because of concessions she was putting forward on behalf of the employers.

The power of the retailers (e.g. Woolworths) was well demonstrated when it killed a key Rudd initiative - the price monitoring website, Grocery Choice, earlier in the year.

No one should forget that back on the 18 March 2008, Minister Gillard said her new IR framework “is about making people better off and it will”.

“And I can give the guarantee that no worker from the Bill we have passed today into Australian law, will be worse off.” (emphasis added).

On Thursday 3^rd September 2009, a year and a half later, Ms Gillard said “… our stated objective is that employers and employees are not disadvantaged under the [IR] system.”

Prime Minister Rudd at the same time refused to guarantee that no worker or employer would be left worse off: “The objective that modern awards are not intended (emphasis added) to disadvantage employees or increase costs for employers, stands”. The new re-phrasing is a worrying development.

In the important offshore gas industries, where hard won wages and conditions have always been under pressure from the employers, cut backs using Award Modernisation are being pursued. The work roster of “two weeks on and two weeks off” has been well established so that workers in this important resources sector can have some sort of real family life. Employers are seeking, via FWA, that such rosters can be altered “at the discretion of the employer”.

The AWU is also concerned about similar entitlement reductions being imposed on workers in the seafood and cemetery industries as well. Quite rightly the AWU is resisting these moves and has called on Julia Gillard to intervene. This request is of course in the same vein as how the supermarket giants had asked her to intervene a few weeks earlier.

The ASU is concerned that Airline workers could lose between $70 and $300 per week, if two existing awards were impacted on as proposed via the Award Modernisation process.

The ANF bought into the Award Modernisation entanglement by speaking out on behalf of the nations aged care nurses. An analysis of the award overhaul proposal for this sector indicates that such workers could lose up to $295 per week! The ANF said there would be widespread ‘voter disillusionment’ if the federal government allowed the revamping of their award that would see significant pay cuts for thousands of aged care nurses, particularly in NSW and QLD.

The CFMEU (Timber Division) is struggling with important wages and conditions threatened by the Award Modernisation process. They recently complained about the “favoured status” of the AIG employer group with the Rudd/ Gillard government, saying it was overreaching into industries it didn’t even cover. Recently the AIG made submissions concerning the timber award. The submissions “run roughshod” over both the industry’s workers and the industry’s own employer peak body (!) and were aimed at affecting rosters, annual leave, available holidays and shift standards.

The ETU has bought into the Award Modernisation process. It is expressing concern that the proposed new Award for the electrical industry will see apprentice electricians worse off. Pay cuts of up to 12-23% will be possible under the draft proposals before FWA.

The ACTU is saying the employers are running a “scurrilous” campaign, overstating the impact of award changes in terms of costs. But in a recent opinion piece (8/9) the ACTU conceded:

“It is notable that they (the employers) have never complained of the savings (emphasis added) many will get through the new modern awards or any of the adverse effects of the new awards on their employees.”

Why is the ACTU conceding this point when the government promised no one would be worse off. It gets worse. The ACTU opinion piece also concedes:

“The process of Award Modernisation has not met all the objectives that unions would have liked. We do remain concerned that workers in some industries risk losing take home pay and conditions”.

Remain concerned! Workers in some industries risk losing take home pay and conditions!

Why admit this when the IR minister promised the exact opposite!

Yes, expose the employers for being up to their usual predictable tricks.

But it was the federal government, post the hugely successful anti-WorkChoices campaign, that promised when it took over the unfinished Award Modernisation process that no worker would be worse off.

The ACTU opinion piece went on to claim: “However the fundamental point is that Award Modernisations will breathe new life into Australia’s unique industrial relations system”.

Codswallop!

The new award system is supposed to be in essence a real, functioning safety net, so that worthwhile overall improvements to wages and conditions can be achieved above its base line, through collective bargaining.

But with workers facing a 5-year transition period before any full, measurable lift in basic award wages and penalty rates may be seen and with the promise that ‘no worker will be worse off’ now not guaranteed, who can have faith in this original, broader objective?

And why use the word ‘unique’ in describing Australia's IR system. This is another implicit concession to the employers and conservatives who have long argued Australia shouldn’t have to deal with a vocal organised trade union movement. They point to other western countries where there is much less emphasis on the political agenda of organised working people.

We shouldn’t be ashamed of our long industrial history, which led to great achievements like shorter hours of work, better OHS in the workplace, maternity leave, superannuation, Long Service Leave, sick leave, universal Medicare and severance and redundancy pay. All were won over time by industry-wide and multiple industry-wide campaigning. Such ‘big issue’ campaigning became illegal under WorkChoices and remains illegal under the Fair Work Act. The descriptor ‘unique’ is conceding the union movement’s influence industrially, socially and politically can be further marginalised by the government.

Silly Malcolm Turnbull recently let the cat out of the bag. He refused to rule out that, if in government, he would re-introduce laws that would allow the return of AWA’s and individual workplace contracts generally. Again this is promoted in the name of workplace “flexibility”.

This is what the big employers want. They hate collective bargaining. They have always wanted to divide and rule within their respective workforces using individual contracts. There should be no shock about this.

However the exposure of this reactionary thinking reminds us of why many workers have insisted the organised trade union movement continue the fight for the best IR laws possible, under the current government. This task is incomplete. The new Fair Work Act allows for many thousands of AWA’s already in place to continue. New enterprise agreements have to contain a ‘model flexibility clause’ that will allow individual flexibility arrangements.

The recent Campbell Soups dispute in Shepparton tested the latter WorkChoices-Lite adaptation.

The AMWU and its members fought the Campbell Soups’ provocation for a good result, namely that the majority of workers should be able to agree to proposed flexibility arrangements, not the employer ‘hiving off’ individual employees in order to put in place certain arrangements, behind closed doors. The unions’ concerns were well founded. An employer could set up work arrangements with an individual. These could directly impact on another worker or group of workers, who did not have a say about it. Campbell Soups conceded to this logic, after its employees said “No”.

However this logic is not what the current government recognises as underpinning its Fair Work Act intentions with respect to the model flexibility clause.

Minister Gillard during the debate around the Campbell’s Soup dispute promoted other agreements (e.g. CSR Fibre Cement). This agreement does apparently allow individual flexibility arrangements to vary any term of the principal enterprise collective agreement. So much for the death of Howard’s WorkChoices law.

Around the same time, the CEPU – Postal Workers Union went to FWA for a national ballot of its Australia Post members. This was to win approval for industrial action in order to try to win a new Collective Agreement.

The previous C.A. was struck back in 2006. Yet FWA cancelled the proposed industrial action, claiming the union “was not genuinely trying to reach an agreement”. After 3 years!

Telstra in September put forward a meagre offer to its workers. The CEPU – Telecommunications Division rejected it. This after many months of trying out “good faith bargaining”. The Telstra dispute has been dragging on for years and the new laws since 1 July have not opened up a way forward.

The LHMU have been trying to use the new IR laws to achieve a single collective agreement with Coca Cola Amatil in South Australia. However FWA has made technical rulings to stop this from happening.

In an interview on the ‘7.30 Report (14/9) AIG’s Heather Riddout said “we should be working hard to get the most value out of the legislation (be) cause its very new and there’s a lot of aspects that can be very helpful in it”. (emphasis added).

When asked about the big issues emerging from the new IR legislation - such as the individual flexibility clause, Award Modernisation, the national harmonisation of OHS laws, the ongoing operation of the anti-building workers ABCC and its coercive powers and generally how much ‘deep angst’ these were generating - AWU National Secretary Paul Howes said they were “not that deep at all…these aren’t gigantic issues…there is no fundamental problem”, with them.

To be fair, Paul Howes did say later that the continuation of the ABCC coercive powers were “a substantive issue” and deemed the findings from the recent Wilcox review as “wrong.” However he gave the government’s IR laws 7 out of 10.

Riddout refused to give a mark out of 10 saying she wished to go through “the current bargaining round” first.

The hundreds of thousands of workers facing negative impacts from Award Modernisation, the OHS national harmonisation process and the many hurdles surrounding collective bargaining, should not be described as “the fringe minority”. They would view these outstanding issues as ‘fundamental,’ deserving ongoing vigorous campaigning by the union movement.

At least Paul Howes fronted the government’s pro-ABCC stance head on at the recent ALP National Conference back in July/August. Many other union leaders were silent on the matter.

Consider in contrast the report on the same Conference in a major public sector unions’ magazine. Issues such as minor government procurement policy changes, the winning of a staff representative on the ABC Board, acknowledging recognition of the national paid parental leave that will not be less than the minimum ILO maternity leave standard, acceptance that public service employment must be fair and that superannuation rights will be in future industrial agreements, received emphasis in the article.

But the report highlighted that some in the union movement simply do not want to take on the federal government over the substantial ‘unfinished business’ left over from the enactment of the Fair Work Act.

Others do take a different slant. The incoming VTHC Assistant Secretary David Cragg has gone public in an ALP Branch newsletter (August) lamenting the ‘disbanding’ of the ‘Your Rights At Work’ Campaign. He suggested that claiming “victory” over WorkChoices in November 2007 was “a shocking strategic mistake.” Comrade Cragg gave due recognition to the essential role unions played in the defeat of Howard. He warned about ignoring the Union–ALP connection at election time. He pointed out many union members…don’t vote labour all the time, but who could have a nice edge in a lot of marginal electorates – that could be handy in 2010.

A very honest appraisal that many federal ALP politicians don’t admit to, especially when in office.

As an example of this is the federal IR Minister who has publicly gone out of her way to try to reduce the credit given to the union movement’s ‘Your Rights at Work Campaigns’ in 2005–2007.

She said sometime back that it was her “political analysis” that “the average Australian believed in employee rights…but they don’t believe in vested interests and don’t believe in union power”.

This contempt for unions is unwarranted and hypocritical.

The huge rallies and the week-in, week-out campaigning against Howard’s IR laws were principally organised by unions. At the rallies, the ALP politicians, then in opposition, had no qualms standing before hundreds of thousands of workers carrying their respective union flags, thanking them for their great effort. There was the shaking of hands and many expressions of appreciation. No mention to anyone, never mind the crowd, from these same ALP Politicians that their presence on the union paid for stage was qualified i.e. they didn’t want anyone to think they were there at the behest of “union power”. The demonizing of so called ‘union power’ is an old Conservative and Employer stunt. It is a perpetual, crude attempt to try and divide elected union officials from the rank and file. The facts are that in the successful Your Rights Work Campaign, union leaderships and rank and file workers were as one – fighting to defeat the anti–worker Howard government.

The now post-2007 creation of the false dichotomy – that Rudd and Gillard do not endorse or are not dictated to by either unions or big business - is quite dangerous politically. The hundreds of thousands of union co–ordinated workers in the federal marginal seats will definitely not appreciate having their contribution and effort lumped into such a crude, artificial scenario. They will, in particular not accept that their work to unseat Howard deserves to equally be compared with big business and corporate power. No evidence has been put forward by Rudd and Gillard that the union movement is continually converting the efforts of their rank and file into raw, unconnected “union power” that somehow delivers implied unsavoury outcomes. What many in the union movement have been happy to do since November 2007 is follow up on the expectations of rank and file workers by continuing to campaign for the best new IR laws possible. This task, in the view of many, is yet to be achieved. Others, unfortunately, think the best result is already on the table.

The Deputy Prime Minister has specifically argued that the Fair Work Act is as good as it gets and claims WorkChoices is dead. The evidence is to the contrary. The current government’s legislation continues to reflect key aspects of the previous WorkChoices law. ILO conventions are also breached by the new IR laws and regulations.

Federal ALP MP’s have been lobbied about these issues. Many of them, some with trade union backgrounds, often refuse to meet workers’ delegations over the ongoing concerns about the IR laws.

It was amusing to see some of these federal MPs recently try to lobby the Prime Minister over their electorate printing allowances. The new policy was to see such allowances cut from $100,000 to $75,000 per annum. This issue got some of our Federal ALP MP’s hotter under the collar than what is happening to working people out in their electorates!

The 2010 federal election is shaping up to be a completely different kettle of fish than the one in 2007.