THE HOWARD Government recently unveiled its next wave of industrial reforms following its re-election, promising to reduce the duplication between State and federal industrial relations law coverage, further simplify and extend the use of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and push for an overhaul of unfair dismissal laws
THE HOWARD Government recently unveiled its next wave of industrial reforms following its re-election, promising to reduce the duplication between state and federal industrial relations law coverage, further simplify and extend the use of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and push for an overhaul of unfair dismissal laws.
Treasurer Peter Costello said the government’s “absolute first priority” would be to pass laws that would allow the government to extend federal unfair dismissals laws to about 7 million workers – up from the current 4 million, and exempt businesses with fewer than 20 employees from access to unfair dismissals legislation.
The Senate has blocked changes to such unfair dismissal laws more than 40 times over the past eight years, however with the coalition close to controlling the Senate in its own right (or with the help of the conservative Family First Party) for the first time in 23 years, the coalition could potentially rush a number of controversial workplace reforms through.
The government foreshadowed legislation to simplify the workplace agreement system, providing an option for extending collective agreements from three to five years and ensuring workers and employers have a genuine choice and flexibility to enter into either collective or individualagreements.
The push to streamline awards and encourage their uptake would apply to all Australian businesses, however the government said it would require the AIRC to have specific regard to the particular circumstances of smaller employers in doing so.
The coalition also foreshadowed legislation giving greater recognition to independent contractors – another contentious area over who is deemed an employee and therefore subject to bargaining over conditions. Such legislation would enshrine contractors’rights to be treated as businesses rather than employees and encourage independent contracting as a wholly legitimate form of work.
Such legislation would check the intentions of state-based Labor governments to extend employment regulation to contractors and exempt them from coverage by industrial tribunals or unions seeking to impose limits on their independence, and also pre-empt a number of reviews of the labour hire industry, which have sought to classify contractors as employees.
Another Bill the government has signaled would require the AIRC to take into account the impact on employment rates which might arise from any decision it makes in adjusting rates of pay in awards. Such legislation would most likely place a brake on any pay increases in the AIRC’s minimum wage case.
The government’s industrial relations reform would further restrict the power of unions in the workplace through a number of reforms.
Significantly, the Coalition promised to introduce new laws restricting union access to the workplace and ensure unions’ compliance with reasonable requests over where discussions between the unions and employees could take place.
Such laws would effectively override a recent court decision that determined unions could rely on state laws to enter worksites where all employees were on AWAs and that employers couldn’t prevent unions from entering workplaces and interviewing employees at their work stations in another case.
Additionally, the government will endeavour to strengthen the secondary boycott provisions in the Trade Practices Act 1974 and oppose any attempts by Labor to remove sections from the Act that hold unions accountable for losses caused to businesses by unlawful strike action, including secondary boycotts or sympathy strikes.
The government also signalled a number of other reforms, such as toughening penalties against those who breach AIRC orders, increased government and third-party intervention in industrial disputes and a further crackdown on compulsory union fees.
But in a twist of irony, Prime Minister Howard’s greatest hope of a single and uniform national workplace relations system remains out of reach for the moment.
While the government was committed to “investigating ways” of achieving this prior to the election, Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews acknowledged that the federal government simply didn’t have the constitutional powers to achieve this in the end.
State governments, which are currently held by Labor governments, were also unlikely to embrace Coalition policies. Both NSW and Queensland indicated they would fight any attempts to override their industrial relations systems, while Victoria was the only state open to a national system.
The ACTU also vowed to fight any attempts by the government to introduce a national industrial relations system, claiming that re-election did not give the coalition a mandate to introduce sweeping industrial reforms.
“The Coalition’s IR policies are a simplistic and populist election stunt rather than a serious attempt to grapple with the problems facing Australia’s 10 million strong workforce and the economic changes brought about by globalisation,” said ACTU president Sharan Burrow.
She also expressed concern over the possibility of the government winning control of the Senate and turning it into a rubber stamp for legislation which had previously been log-jammed because of opposition from Labor, the Australian Democrats and other minor parties.
The ACTU acknowledged that the industrial relations environment for unions would become tougher if the coalition’s reforms were passed, but said it had been preparing for such an eventuality through possible strategies such as circumventing right-of-entry laws by approaching employees outside the workplace, targeting companies that lend their support to new federal reforms and running high-profile community campaigns.
