Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me much pleasure to speak in support of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008. The bill begins the important process of unravelling the unfair Work Choices legislation of the previous Howard government. I personally spent much of my time over the past few years campaigning against the Work Choices legislation because of the harmful effect that it had on working families.

In my experience, Work Choices was one of the most divisive public policy measures for many years. It is worth recalling some of its key features so as to place in context some of the work which is to be done by the bill which is before the House. Work Choices involved the abolition of protection against unfair dismissal for millions of people. That meant that people could be sacked, the financial security of their family undermined, without remedy or attention to fair process. It also meant the emasculation of the powers of the independent Australian Industrial Relations Commission, an institution which had historically ensured a fair balance between employers and employees in the workplace. Work Choices also involved the abolition of the national wage case, which had for more than a century provided for an open and transparent process for the determination of minimum wages.

Work Choices also included the undermining of the award safety net, putting basic conditions such as penalty rates for shift work, weekend work, public holiday work, annual leave loading, meal and rest breaks, public holidays and a host of other employment conditions up for grabs in workplace bargaining. If an employee did not have the bargaining power to retain these employment conditions, they could be lost. And if an employer wanted to employ people on condition that they did not receive such entitlements such as penalty rates and other conditions, the law under Work Choices sanctioned that approach.

Work Choices also restricted the right of employees to join and be represented by a union. It also placed restrictions on the right of employees to collectively bargain. Under the Howard government’s regime, even if every single employee in a workplace freely wished to collectively negotiate with their employer, the employer had no obligation under the law to even speak to them. The implementation of Australian workplace agreements was, of course, a key feature of Work Choices. These, as we know, are statutory individual contracts and they were made under Work Choices the legally dominant form of workplace agreement making. AWAs could be imposed by an employer by making them a condition of employment and by refusing to negotiate any other form of agreement, and I had the experience of representing employees on many occasions where employers used them in that manner. Work Choices also overrode the state industrial relations systems without any attention to the potentially harsh impact and loss of employment conditions for employees affected.

The impact of these changes on employees has been devastating. I saw this at first hand in my former role as ACTU Secretary. People were sacked, for example, in the most unfair of circumstances. With no remedy available to them, the termination of their employment not only undermined their financial security but instilled in them a tremendous sense of injustice. I met many people who had never before paid attention to politics and who had never felt previously motivated to be active in their workplace over their industrial rights but whose experience of Work Choices was the catalyst for significant personal change on their part. The loss of unfair dismissal protection alone awakened within many people a sense of injustice and caused them to campaign on behalf of others as well as themselves. Some of these people participated in the Your Rights at Work campaign coordinated by the ACTU against the former Howard government’s workplace laws. There were people like Annette Virgen, a grandmother from Banyo in Queensland, who was sacked for no reason after nine years of loyal service. Andrew Cruikshank, another person I met, was dismissed from his job for operational reasons under the Liberals’ industrial relations laws. Two weeks later the company readvertised his position at a discount of $25,000 on his previous salary. Arthur Ledwidge was another man that I met. His employment was terminated and he was replaced by contractors on inferior terms of employment. Robert Kirkwood’s employment, along with that of other colleagues of his, was terminated by Cowra abattoir, and they were told to reapply with a 30 per cent pay cut. Emily Connor, a woman I met again yesterday at the National Press Club, was a childcare worker in Canberra. She was sacked without warning and without being allowed to even farewell the children who were in her care. She was given 10 minutes to leave the workplace. Jennifer Gillian, a woman in Queensland, was sacked via text message. Lyn Barnes, a woman in Sydney, was sacked after 25 years without a complaint being made against her, and the list could go on and on and on.

The promotion of Australian workplace agreements also had a devastating impact on the take-home pay of many working families. We need to look no further than the statistics cited in the House by the Deputy Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago. From a sample of over 1,700 AWAs lodged between April and October 2006, we know the following: 89 per cent of them excluded one or more protected award conditions; 83 per cent of them excluded two or more; 78 per cent excluded three or more protected award conditions. The most commonly removed protected award conditions included shiftwork loadings. For example, 70 per cent of the AWAs surveyed excluded shiftwork loadings, 68 per cent excluded annual leave loading and 65 per cent excluded penalty rates generally. These are not just statistics. I know from my direct experience of working with people affected by the use of AWAs what they really meant for working families. There was no obligation on an employer under Work Choices to compensate people for the loss of those employment conditions, and it therefore meant that there were direct cuts in people’s take-home pay. That meant that people had even less influence over their working hours and therefore less capacity to manage their family responsibilities. It meant the loss of people’s dignity as well as their standard of living, and all at a time when the pressure of work was increasing and the costs of living were rising.

The key feature of AWAs is that they can remove award conditions, as I said, without any compensation at all. They can undercut the safety net—and it is crystal clear that that was the intent of the Work Choices legislation.

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