Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Fair Work Bill 2008, which we are debating in the chamber is, in my view, the most significant piece of legislation introduced into this parliament, coinciding, as it did, with the anniversary of the election of the Rudd Labor government. The bill comes before us as the result of extensive consultations with all interested parties and stakeholders. And, of necessity, it involves some compromises, but in my view it faithfully implements the major promises that Labor took to the electorate in the lead-up to the last election. In that regard I commend the wonderful campaign of community awareness prosecuted under the umbrella of Your Rights at Work. It was truly a magnificent effort. It underscores the significance of working people having a political voice to give expression to their needs and aspirations, and to guarantee them fairness in the work place. In a modern context it reinforces the very arguments that led to the birth of the Australian Labor Party.

Work Choices was a radical manifesto never put to nor ever endorsed by the electorate in the 2004 election. Exploiting its unexpected Senate majority, the Howard government then rammed through the Work Choices legislation with indecent haste. At the core of Work Choices was the ideological belief of the Howard government in the notion of the freedom of contract. In the words of the then Treasurer, the member for Higgins:

We should be trying to move to an industrial relations system where the predominant instrument is the individual contract …

It was interesting just listening to the comments of the previous speaker from the opposition. He made much of the notion of choice, but of course adherence to the principle of choice could never apply in situations where the bargaining relationship on a one-to-one basis was unequal. I have reflected on some of the debates on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005, and I want to quote a couple of points that I made. In opposition to the bill I argued:

It means dismantling all the protections and institutions we have developed to ensure fairness and all the things we have developed for people at the lower end of the income scale and those who are vulnerable at work to get the protections that a civilised society thinks are fair. It means getting rid of the industrial umpire. It means abolishing the protection of awards. It means getting rid of industrial safety nets. Very importantly, it means that they want to erode the collective representation of workers through their unions.

Those who stood to lose the most in the short term were those who were most vulnerable at work. I consistently argued that the greatest tragedy of these changes was that those who were most vulnerable would be at the mercy of the marketplace in a very short period of time. In that category of the most vulnerable were the young people at work, part-time workers, casual workers, women workers and the 1.6 million workers who were reliant on the award safety net and the minimum wage for their protection.

I argued—rightly so—that the changes would essentially make it easier for the employer to require workers to sign individual work arrangements, the AWAs. Beyond dispute, it was my belief that those agreements would be signed, in many instances, at standards that were lower than the prevailing award safety nets that applied at the time. In many ways I regret the statements and the prophecies I made in those various debates because they were all proven to be correct.

We know that a survey of the first 250 AWAs undertaken by the Office of the Employment Advocate found that nearly one in five of the AWAs excluded all award conditions and replaced them with the barest of the five legislated minimum standards, two-thirds of the AWAs scrapped leave loadings and penalty rates, more than half removed shift allowances, and around one-third of them modified overtime loadings and rest breaks. It was no wonder that the government stopped public disclosure and analysis of the impacts of AWAs from that time on.

In fact we had a farcical situation when the member for North Sydney, who at one stage became the industrial relations minister, confessed:

Quite frankly when I took over the job I don’t think many Ministers in Cabinet were aware that you could be worse off under Work Choices and that you could actually have certain conditions taken away without compensation.

You have to say, ‘What ignorance prevailed amongst the members sitting around the cabinet table!’ But let’s be clear: there was no ignorance on the part of the Prime Minister or the Treasurer; they knew exactly the end result of their strategy.

At all times, as I said, I was most concerned about the disastrous consequences for those who were most vulnerable in the workplace, especially women workers in all employment categories. In one of those debates I argued:

… women are often employed on a part-time and casual basis, they are often located in industries with little bargaining power and they are often not members of the trade union movement. And, as we know from this legislation, more and more of these very vulnerable workers will be forced onto individual contracts in order to get paid employment or, indeed, to retain paid employment.

In other words, ‘Here’s the contract and if you don’t accept it on my terms forget about a job.’ I went on:

As a group, women will lose out on pay and conditions. Despite all the spin, the statistics and the data revealed by the ABS clearly show that to be the case. The data already shows that women on AWAs are doing far worse in comparison to women on collective agreements and even on award conditions.

One year into the playing out of Work Choices in the real world there was an analysis undertaken by Professor Peetz. He found:

WorkChoices has been associated with a decline in average real wages, at least in the short term, despite the economic boom. It appears to have led to real wages decline in retail and hospitality, probably as a result of the loss of penalty rates in those industries, and in the short term at least a drop in real and relative earnings for women, while profits are at record levels.

Despite such comprehensive analysis and ABS data which showed conclusively that women on AWAs were earning less than women on collective agreements the then minister, the member for North Sydney, had the gall to argue:

… the pay gap between men and women has narrowed. So we are getting to a better position in relation to the pay gap.

But his claims were not upheld by the facts when you look at the ABS data which analysed the gender pay gap that prevailed in the years of the Howard government. In fact, there had been no narrowing in the wages gap since the election of the Howard government. The ratio of total female earnings as a percentage of male earnings was 65½ per cent in May 1996. A decade later, in November 2006, the ratio remained at 65½ per cent. Female ordinary time earnings as a percentage of male earnings had been in decline since February 2005 when the ratio was 85.2 per cent. By November 2006, the ratio had fallen to 83.7 per cent—the worst outcome in the gender gap on this set of data since August 1998. In November 1996, the ratio on this data was 84.2 per cent. A decade later, the wages gap had in fact gone backwards and had fallen to 83.7 per cent. This was the legacy of Work Choices and its disastrous impact on those most vulnerable at work, including large numbers of women. I raise that as the situation that prevailed under Work Choices. I regret that some of the statements I made about the potential deleterious effects proved to be the case.

Women in any category of employment at the moment will be especially pleased to know that they will be significant beneficiaries of the provisions enshrined in this bill. Firstly, and very importantly, for those women who rely on the award and the minimum wage, this bill will provide for a fair and comprehensive safety net of employment conditions that no-one can strip away from them. There will be 10 National Employment Standards, compared to just five—and those five had qualifications—under the Work Choices regime. People will know that their maximum weekly hours of work will be 38 hours for full-time employees. They will have provisions for flexible working arrangements and improved parental leave provisions—a must for all those working people out there trying to balance work and family life. They will have clear statements in terms of their entitlement to annual, personal, compassionate and community service leave. Their long service leave rights and public holidays will be enshrined, as will notification of termination and redundancy pay.

Considering that for many women at work their award prescribes their actual wage rates and working conditions, the 10 matters that will be encompassed in awards from January 2010 will build on the National Employment Standards. Their awards, in a modernised form, will outline their entitlements including, very importantly, overtime and penalty rates—the subject of much stripping away under Work Choices. They will know their rights to minimum wages and allowances and there will be procedures enshrined in the awards for consultation, representation and dispute settlement. So no more rip-offs, no more stripping away of the safety net of entitlements and no more reductions in people’s take-home pay. Instead of the insidious AWAs, our new system is focused on collective bargaining at the enterprise level. Good faith bargaining obligations will apply to all parties, with enforceable orders. Where workers are able to bargain—and we encourage them all to do so, if they can—and where they can reach an enterprise agreement, a test will be applied to ensure each employee is better off overall in comparison to their relevant, modernised award.

As well, and very importantly for many workers who rely on annual minimum wage reviews—1.6 million at last count—in future these will be guaranteed, providing certainty for all low-wage employees. Also very importantly, due recognition is given in this bill—and this is a very remarkable breakthrough—to the fact that many employees, particularly women, lack adequate bargaining capacity and have historically been denied the benefits of collective bargaining. In such circumstances, Fair Work Australia will be able to facilitate multi-employer bargaining if such bargaining is deemed to be in the public interest. If bargaining fails, Fair Work Australia would have the capacity to make a workplace determination, resulting in ‘first contract’ arbitration. Despite the ill-informed commentary from opposition members, this is not pattern bargaining and no protected industrial action would apply. Fair Work Australia would apply a set of threshold criteria to decide whether the arbitration should proceed, including that the employees are substantially award reliant, that parties had genuinely tried to reach agreement and that making the determination would promote productivity and efficiency in the enterprise concerned.

I am delighted to read that the bill will strengthen equal remuneration provisions by including in the objectives to the act the principle of equal remuneration for work of comparable value. This recognises the limitations historically in the application of the equal pay for work of equal value principle, as it has been applied historically. In my view, this provides great scope for the union movement to continue addressing the gender pay gap that I referred to earlier. The four-yearly reviews of awards and the possibility of work value claims usher in a new era of opportunities for unions covering predominantly female workers who, as we know, have had their skills and experiences traditionally undervalued. This will help to right that historic injustice. In my view this is a historic bill, ushering in a new national system of workplace relations for private sector workers.

In conclusion, I would like to place on record my thanks to all who were involved in the outcomes contained in this bill. In that regard, two recently elected members, the members for Petrie and Deakin, deserve special thanks in so ably representing their caucus colleagues in those discussions. Both were elected in 2007 and in their first year in parliament have helped shape our new workplace relations system. That is something that will always carry special significance for them in their time in parliament ahead. As the Chinese would describe it, it is a case of ‘double happiness’. Thanks are also due to Cath Bowtell from the ACTU and Andrea Lester from the minister’s office for their painstaking efforts.

When history is written, this bill will be regarded as historic, not just for what it delivers for working people but, very importantly, for the fact that the responsibility for the carriage of this legislation has rested with a woman—a most capable woman—our first female Deputy Prime Minister. This is at a time when the ACTU also has at its helm a female president. How times have changed in a very short period. This surely must rate as a very significant milestone for women’s achievements in the labour movement. I commend the bill to the House. It is a significant and historic piece of legislation, marking in my view the high point of the first year of the Rudd Labor government.

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