Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday marked the introduction of the Howard government’s extreme workplace laws. Overnight, the entire notion of a fair go was junked for working Australians. This legislation marks the beginning of the Howard government’s attack on employees and their families, and inevitably we will begin to see more and more victims of John Howard’s war on workers.

In the context of the new workplace laws, I rise today to speak about an important situation at the James Hardie site in Meeandah in my electorate of Lilley. Here employees have been attempting to negotiate their enterprise bargaining agreement since September 2005, to no avail. Since late last year, James Hardie deliberately held out and dragged their feet on negotiations in what can now only be perceived as a strategy to bide their time until the Work Choices legislation came through.

In Howard’s new workplace environment, James Hardie can now negotiate a deal which will be well below the standards of the previous agreements. Some 47 workers at Meeandah could lose over $100 per week in penalty rates. The dispute at Meeandah goes to the heart of the concerns of working Australians about the government’s industrial relations agenda. Here employees are being pitted against one another and being forced into a position where they must accept a different agreement with eroded wages and conditions.

Employees at James Hardie at Meeandah have not had a wage increase since September 2004 and have nothing to look forward to except reduced pay and penalty rates. Since October last year, James Hardie has refused to renegotiate a common collective agreement covering its two sites at Meeandah and Carole Park. In a deliberate attempt to hold wages down, the company has steadfastly attempted to pursue different agreements on each site. To lock employees at Meeandah out and effectively force them into submission, accepting lower conditions and wages than their colleagues at Carole Park, is simply reprehensible.

The company’s action has been deliberately timed to coincide with the passage of the new workplace relations legislation, which severely weakens enterprise agreements. The company has made it explicitly clear in negotiations with the union that it plans to reduce overtime and penalty rates so it can pay employees less for the same 12-hour shift. This is a serious concern for the bulk of the employees who rely substantially on overtime and penalties to make ends meet.

It has been a stressful few months for James Hardie’s employees at Meeandah. James Hardie frustrated all attempts by employees and the Australian Workers Union to bargain in good faith, even taking the drastic step of locking employees out of the Meeandah site through October and November 2005. It was the typical bullyboy approach using a sledgehammer to crack a nut in an attempt to force employees to submit to their demands.

United workers at both sites have refused to split negotiations for the moment but, with the introduction of the new Work Choices, they will now legally have to negotiate two separate agreements. James Hardie insisted all along that the two agreements were necessary to maintain viability at both plants but, in reality, it was all about making it easier to erode working conditions at different sites. I rise to lend my support to the workers at James Hardie at Meeandah and hope they can achieve an equitable—(Time expired)