Sue Bolton, Melbourne
Back in March, federal finance minister Nick Minchin was sprung telling the right-wing HR Nicholls Society that the federal government had plans to introduce further changes to industrial relations laws after the next federal election.
At the time, there were so many bad news stories about Work Choices appearing in the media that the government had to work hard to hose down the bad press. Part of that was to deny that it was planning any more IR changes.
Now the Australian Council of Trade Unions has obtained evidence that the big corporations belonging to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry are secretly discussing further IR changes with the government. On July 20, the ACTU released a leaked discussion paper presented by the ACCI to the government during a meeting the week before. The ACCI's main proposals are to:
- remove the limit on the length of the standard working week (currently 38 hours) in workplace agreements so that all hours worked in excess of 38 hours are presumed to be reasonable;
- allow Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) individual contracts to override the legal minimum standard for personal leave, and provide employees with only five days sick/personal leave, instead of the current 10 days, and cap entitlements for unpaid leave to care for a sick child or family member;
- allow all four weeks of annual leave to be "cashed out", instead of the current two weeks maximum. Regular weekend shift workers would lose their current entitlement to a fifth week of annual leave, which is compensation for working unsocial hours;
- allow AWA individual contracts to override the legal minimum standard for parental leave, and to trade off parental leave entitlements for 12 months' unpaid leave after the birth of a child; and
- enable employers to cut the wages of low-paid employees on state awards by $20 per week in NSW and Western Australia and $17 per week in South Australia.
ACTU secretary Greg Combet told the media on July 20, "These documents show that there are secret discussions between the business lobby and the government to further attack the basic rights of Australian workers". Acting workplace relations minister Philip Ruddock responded that the government would consider "fine-tuning" the laws, but would not "redraw" them.
An ACCI spokesperson revealed that the big-business body is "in constant dialogue with the government" about industrial relations laws. In other words, the large corporations are virtually part of government, working with it in secret to hatch plans for rolling back workers' rights and standard of living so they can maximise corporate profits. The mutually agreed plans are then sprung on the public; so much for democracy.
Major corporations' central role in shaping industrial relations laws in Australia means that the trade union movement must exert pressure for change not only on the government, but also on the big capitalists. Through targeted industrial action we can make the large employers feel enough economic pain to force them to back down.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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