BY ANDREW HALL
CANBERRA — As well as state governments trying to slash workers rights to fair compensation for injury, the federal government is aiming to push through its own attacks that will affect 285,655 commonwealth public sector and ACT government workers by cutting $31 million from Comcare, the authority that implements the federal workers' compensation program.
Federal workplace relations minister Tony Abbott is pushing legislation through parliament — initially rejected by the Senate in July 1997 — that will make amend the Commonwealth Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (SRC) Act to make it harder to obtain workers' compensation, in particular for stress-related claims. The legislation also restricts the capacity of employees and their unions to ensure workplaces are healthy and safe by aligning the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS) with the Workplace Relations Act.
Victims of stress who suffer disease or injury would be unable to claim if their employer said these resulted from activities defined as "normal work practices" and "normal management activities". The present definition allows for compensation where an employee suffers an injury "arising out of or in the course of employment" or a disease where employment is a material contribution. The change means that injuries brought about by a stroke or heart attack, for example, will not be compensable unless a "close connection" with employment can be established. A list of items must then be taken into account to determine the "close connection", instead of the usual test of taking the employee as one finds them.
Abbott's attempt to roll back workers' compensation rights should be seen in the context of a substantial increase in stress-related illness and injury over the last 15 years. Fifty percent of Australian employees experienced greater stress in their jobs over the previous 12 months, according to the latest Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS 1995). And nearly 60% reported increased effort and 46% an increase in the pace of work, while 43% reported they had no say in the way their work is organised or over decisions at work which affect them.
The current definition of injury and disease has produced straightforward and non-technical results in what is supposed to be beneficial legislation. These changes rather than refining some of the intentions of the initial 1988 legislation will likely result in only providing even more lining in the pockets of lawyers and medical specialists.
There is no financial problem with the federal workers' compensation scheme from the current application of the code. In fact results are improving and the scheme is fully funded with Comcare premiums among the lowest of any schemes, down from 1.7% of payroll in 1995-96 to 1.03% in 1999-2000. All of Comcare's liabilities are also fully funded.
The cuts first proposed by then workplace relations minister Peter Reith and now by Abbott will only mean that injured workers will be thrown onto the inadequately funded public health system in order to further subsidise reductions in government and employers costs.
The changes to the OHS Act are also unnecessary and are likely to limit the influence of health and safety representatives and committees in the workplace in which in order could undermine the gains in health and safety conditions over the last 20 years when it becomes an employer controlled system. And just like the draconian Workplace Relations Act, the proposals that talk about employee consultation are a joke.
Research clearly shows that there are better health and safety outcomes where unions are involved. The AWIRS shows that if there is no union in the workplace only 19% will have a health and safety committee compared to 59% of unionised workplaces, and a workplace is twice as likely to have undertaken a health and safety audit in the last 12 months if the workplace is unionised. Research from Worksafe (also defunded by the Howard government) also shows workplaces with effective health and safety committees have fewer compensation claims.
The proposed amendments that aim to exclude union representatives from participation in OHS matters are simply part of the Hoard government's drive to deny unions from representing workers on important issues that affect them. They are clearly not designed to improve OHS outcomes.
[Andrew Hall is a Community and Public Sector Union delegate in Comcare Australia.]