Archived Industrial News: November 2007

WorkChoices is the worst choice

The evidence continues to build against the Federal Government’s WorkChoices legislation with the release of a comprehensive new study reporting on the impact of the legislation one year after implementation. The report, Australia@Work, covers the findings of a five year study of working life and the impacts of the legislative changes on Australian workers and their families. Findings will be published each year, with the current report based on surveys of 8,343 participants.

The latest findings add to a number of recent reports highlighting the negative impact of the WorkChoices legislation on workers and families.

Some of the key findings include:

• In the first 12 months of WorkChoices the proportion of lower-skilled employees covered by awards fell by 6%, while the number covered by individual arrangements including AWAs increased by 4%.
  
• Over a million employees (13%) changed the type of instrument governing their wages and conditions. The primary basis for change was moving between jobs. The change overwhelmingly involved moving onto non-union arrangements such as AWAs, non-union collective agreements or award-free common law contracts.
  
• Nearly half (46%) of employees covered by AWAs reported they did not feel they had the opportunity to negotiate their pay with their employer.
  
• Younger workers and those working in lower skilled and lower-paid occupations are more likely to be covered by non-negotiated agreements. Employees on these types of ‘agreements ’earn the lowest hourly rates of those on any type of instruments regardless of their skill level.
  
• Overall, employees on collective agreements earned an average of $106.40 per week more than those employed on AWAs.
  
• For low skilled, low paid workers, non-union agreements such as AWAs have little to do with tailoring employment arrangements to the circumstances of the parties. Rather they appear to provide a pathway for moving people in weak bargaining positions off comprehensive awards onto lower standards.
  
• Over one-fifth of all workers work 50 hours per week or more.31%of all workers want to change their working hours;26.5%of full-time workers wanted to work fewer hours; and 20.6%of part-time employees wanted more hours. About 800,000 workers are underemployed and want more hours of work.
  

This and other studies have provided some useful insights into the impact of the WorkChoices legislation, something the Federal Government has been at pains to avoid. Researchers have repeatedly been denied access to WorkChoices AWAs preventing independent scrutiny of such arrangements. It is not difficult to come to the conclusion (based on the reports so far including one leaked from the government department responsible for overseeing WorkChoices),that this Government does indeed have something to hide.

The report Australia@Work: the benchmark report by Brigid van Wanrooy, Sarah Oxenbridge, John Buchanan and Michelle Jakubauskas is available here.

Debbie Richards
ANF Federal Industrial Officer