Archived Industrial News: October 2007

Reducing choice and fairness: the reality of WorkChoices

I think most would agree that Australia is a less fair place than it used to be. Over the past 20 years governments of all persuasions at both federal and state levels have overseen and promoted a redistribution of wealth and opportunities that have favoured some Australians over others.

During this period our policy makers have successfully dismantled or reduced some of the most basic protections in our public services, in the questionable pursuit of increasing competition and efficiencies to place Australia in a more competitive position to compete in global markets.

Not surprisingly, the Howard Government has also made changes to the rules and regulations that govern Australian workplaces. However before the election of the Howard government in 1996, there was generally bipartisan political support for the view that industrial relations regulations and the workplace generally should not be fully exposed to the cold winds of competition. Industrial structures and institutions were seen as necessary to balance the worst excesses of the market and provide protections for both employers and employees, while promoting economic growth and employment.

With the advent of WorkChoices a bipartisan approach no longer exists and has been replaced by a political fault line that many say will determine the outcome of the next federal election. In early 2005 WorkChoices was promoted as a necessary adjustment in response to the changing nature of global markets and also as a system that would promote choice and flexibility.

The broad objective of WorkChoices was to create a national system of industrial regulation that wherever possible prohibited the involvement of third parties in the workplace and promoted individual arrangements (AWAs) at the expense of collective agreements. WorkChoices dramatically extended an employer’s right to manage a business principally by providing a legal framework to terminate employees without question. WorkChoices also severely curtailed the right of employees to take industrial action either collectively or individually, almost to the point of suppression.

Despite the frequent claims of the Howard/Costello government, WorkChoices is not about choice or deregulation; in reality it is extensive and prescriptive re-regulation of the workplace.

The Workplace Relations Act is incredibly complex comprising 1,200 pieces of legislation and 600 pages of regulation. The recent introduction of the ‘fairness test ’to evaluate agreements has added a further 50 pages of regulation.

It is not surprising that it is a very detailed and restrictive set of laws seeking to impose government control over virtually every industrial process and outcome both within and beyond the workplace.

WorkChoices is actually about reducing choice. A good example of this is the role and application of an AWA (the agreement of choice for the Coalition government).Once you sign an AWA choice is effectively gone. When the AWA ends you can’t go back to an existing collective agreement that may apply to your colleagues at the workplace and you can’t go back to the award even if you and your employer agree this should happen.

If you are unable to reach agreement with your employer over the terms of a new AWA you then revert to the five minimum pay and conditions standards. If that is not palatable the only option is to await the renegotiation of the new collective agreement or leave employment.

WorkChoices is not about allowing employers and employees to freely choose the terms and conditions that may apply at their workplace. The residential aged care industry is a good example of this. There are stark differences in the wages paid to nurses in the public hospital sector compared to aged care; a difference that is progressively getting worse. For many years the ANF has argued the wages gap between aged care and the hospital sector is due principally to industrial relations laws that are inconsistent, do not integrate with other aged care regulations, and are not about providing choice for employers or employees. There is a market for nursing labour in aged care but not a deregulated or free market. The Coalition government’s industrial relations laws coupled with the funding arrangements in aged care leave few options for employers and employees, and exacerbate the crisis in attracting and retaining quality nursing staff in the system.

The ANF continues to campaign for changes to both industrial and funding policies in aged care that will allow employers to fairly compete for nursing labour and allow nursing staff to be remunerated at fair and reasonable levels.

To achieve these goals WorkChoices needs to be scrapped. It doesn’t work and won’t work because the laws were poorly conceived in an environment where ideology prevailed and reason was abandoned.

WorkChoices is not underpinned by a cohesive set of values; rather it represents a short sighted opportunistic effort to shift the balance of power in the workplace: a shift opposed by most Australians.

The ANF will continue to campaign for industrial laws that are built on the following principles:

Nick Blake
ANF Federal Industrial Officer