UNCERTAINTIES AROUND workplace relations laws will make life more complicated for HR professionals, an expert panel of lawyers and industrial relations academics has warned
UNCERTAINTIES AROUND workplace relations laws will make life more complicated for HR professionals, an expert panel of lawyers and industrial relations academics has warned.
Speakers at the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Teaching (ACIRRT) annual labour law conference in Sydney offered insights into the opportunities and threats emerging from the new legal environment.
For the past 100 years, legislative powers to enact labour laws have been divided between the Commonwealth and state parliaments. However, with this set to change as part of the Howard Government’s plans to expand its labour law jurisdiction, the fallout will be felt across the hiring and firing frontier.
Section 51 of the Constitution has shaped federal labour laws by its focus on industrial disputes and requirements that their settlement occur either through conciliation or arbitration.
The reforms will have a significant impact on the shape and nature of this legislation, among them adequate means of seeking redress over workplace issues in an environment of increased deregulation.
“It will be the new found power of the individual that will be driving labour law,” said ACIRRT senior research fellow, Therese MacDermott.
She said workers want safety, security and freedom from discrimination and the right to participation, along with a cost effective, speedy remedy to workplace disputes.
“The tribunal system has worked well,” she said, but the reforms of the Howard Government threatened improved access to the justice system for workers. “Are we really going to rely on the States to bolster up the minimalist federalist system?”
The proposed changes to industrial relations will mark a decisive reduction in the reach of labour law and increase in commercial principles by the regulation of working life. The key issues will include progress issues such as unfair dismissal and discrimination claims in a deregulated context.
HR professionals will have to stay on top of the complex changes and how the rights and obligations of employers, employees and unions will be affected by the changes in labour market deregulation.
Changes to the unfair dismissal system, for example, will cover 85 per cent of the workforce.
