THE FEDERAL government’s proposed industrial relations changes have come under fire again for being anti-family, unfair and out of touch with the current workforce.
THE FEDERAL Government’s proposed industrial relations changes have come under fire again for being anti-family, unfair and out of touch with the current workforce.
According to University of Adelaide Research Fellow and Labour Studies expert, Associate Professor Barbara Pocock, the Howard Government’s industrial blueprint is out of touch with 21st century working family life.
“When the Prime Minister introduced his industrial relations proposals in Parliament in May 2005, he described them as a 20 year old vision. Unfortunately, his attachment to a set of proposals that have spent 20 years on the shelf does not fit well with the new workforce,” she said.
That workforce consists of more women than ever before with around 40 per cent of Australia’s workers having direct responsibility for the care of others. “Many need to make transitions in their lives, take leave, and find flexibility on terms which can accommodate their households. This means flexibility with rights, rather than an untrammelled employer right to hire and fire, fix work schedules, and gain workplace flexibility at the cost of employee say and control,” Pocock said.
The Government argues that with over 130 different pieces of industrial relations legislation, over 4,000 different awards, and six different workplace systems operating across the country, Australia’s workplace relations system needs to be made simpler.
It also claims that the changes will make the workplace agreement-making process easier as well as establish the Australian Fair Pay Commission to protect minimum and award wages.
However, Pocock is not convinced by these and other claims including those that the reforms will ensure an ongoing role for the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). Of concern are changes which will remove certain powers of the AIRC, such as its capacity to consider new minimum standards to support working carers.
“Every general industrial advance in Australia’s history to support working carers (whether maternity, parental, or annual leave, or other rights) has been secured through the considered deliberations of the AIRC, weighing the views of employers and employees and gradually moving community standards. This has had the important effect of not leaving those with least power – women and carers amongst them – behind the pack of those with more labour market power who have been able to win advances in the field, without the Commission,” Pocock said.
“The loss of the Commission’s ‘umpire’ function and its general capacities to arbitrate and conciliate are very significant losses. Further, the shift to individual contracting in the presence of very much weaker general tests of ‘disadvantage’ will affect many working carers negatively. Employees will no doubt face individual contracts without provision for penalty rates or overtime rates. Their overall pay rate will no longer need to compensate them for these losses. This means that overtime and unsocial working time will increase. Sixty-two per cent of Australian workers already work unsocial hours on an occasional or regular basis.”
Working harder rather than smarter will also adversely affect households in other ways. “There is strong international evidence about the negative impact of work patterns like night work on marital tension and divorce, and strong evidence of negative impacts arising from parental work in unsocial times on children. The Prime Minister might support a 24/7 workplace, but most households don’t operate on such a timetable. School hours, family social time, sport for children – all of these still happen mainly on weekends.
At a time when the Australian birth rate of 1.77 per woman is still below the generally-accepted replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman of child-bearing age many of the reforms seem short sighted.
“Australian already work high levels of long hours by international standards. A fifth of Australians now work more than 50 hours a week. The health and safety research tells us that these workers face higher mental health problems, a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease, and are likely to drink and smoke more than is good for them.
In addition, the benefits of moving to individual contracts for anyone other than business are dubious.
“It is hard to find an economist or workplace relations specialist in Australia who agrees with the Commonwealth’s argument that a shift to individual contracts will advance productivity. There is no convincing evidence in support of this proposition,” Pocock said.
“However, individual contracts which lower wages and labour costs will increase profits. The profit share of GDP in Australia is already at a high level at present, relative to historical trends, and has been rising since 1996.”
For human resource managers conflicting pressures, of helping to create supportive and accessible workplaces versus taking a more strategic role in the running of their businesses, will be difficult.
“Many human resources managers know that the real challenge they face in the next decade is retaining and finding skilled and unskilled workers. This depends on general increases in participation rates. People will be drawn into the labour market and workplaces where they are decently and fairly paid and have the chance of increasing their skills and pay, as well as having a life. It is hard to see how lower wages and a harsher unfair dismissal environment will assist these challenges,” she said.
