First Nations peoples highlight workplace reforms ahead of Jobs Summit

Ahead of the Jobs and Skills Summit, the First Nations Employment Alliance already laid out workplace reforms for the future of First Nations peoples at the First Nations Workplace Symposium, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) said in a media release.

According to ACTU Indigenous Officer Lara Watson, the symposium, held on 28 August in Canberra, aimed to launch the alliance, listen to the crowd, and create a work plan and strategy to delve deeper into the future of First Nations employment.

The union further said that the alliance comprises “peak bodies, practitioners, consultants, unions, academics, and community organisations with the joint principle of listening deeply to fellow First Nations people to create a positive and self-determined future.”

Seven shared goals

Despite government and corporate efforts to impose Western employment paradigms on First Nations peoples, ACTU said they failed to recognize the history of employment exclusion, First Nations people’s diversity, and the significant impacts of racism in the community.

In line with the alliance’s aim to explore the future of First Nation people, it established seven shared goals to take to the Jobs Summit. According to ACTU, the goals include:

1. An investigation into overt and covert workplace racism and discrimination against First Nations people. The Workplace Racism Inquiry should be conducted by the Fair Work Commission and Human Rights Commission with recommendations;

2. An inquiry into First Nations pay equity and systems to address it, including superannuation with recommendations and mechanisms to resolve the issue;

3. The redevelopment of community employment programs to ensure proper wages for work and work-like activities. Workers must be given adequate workplace conditions. There must be an investment into meaningful jobs in the country, with significant community input and control. Work should be meaningful and include cultural and unpaid labour and care, cultural caring for land and country, skills, and training. Employment programs must lead to genuine employment outcomes, and no program should have work-like activities, paid or unpaid, for long periods;

4. The insertion of cultural matters must be included into industrial instruments and legal employment frameworks;

5. Consideration of community responsibility, care, and caring for land and country redefined as ‘work’ in the Australian work paradigm;

6. The Government must realign portfolios currently sitting in the NIAA to the corresponding minister to ensure the First Nations community is considered across the economic and policy-making platforms of the government;

7. A workplace relations system that reflects the community’s needs. A system that ensures stolen money is returned quickly and a system that is local and accessible. The workplace relations system must be flexible and allow the mob to make a collective agreement. First Nations organisations need to be able to make agreements that cover multiple organisations, and there should be no restrictions on what can be included in these agreements.

Additionally, among the goals of the alliance that Watson emphasized is the removal of the Community Development Program (CDP) as it was “racist, punitive, and blatantly targeted indigenous communities.”

The ACTU indigenous officer also demanded the government prioritise self-determination, investigation into workplace racism against First Nations people, and First Nations pay equity.

“We look forward to working with the Albanese Government at the upcoming Jobs Summit to deliver positive change,” Watson said.