Australian Broadcasting Corporation


LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1479021.htm

Broadcast: 10/10/2005

Unions, Opposition vow to fight IR changes

Reporter: Heather Ewart

KERRY O'BRIEN: Welcome to the program. Later - the awful shaking of the subcontinent. Pakistan's pain through the eyes of a front-line aid worker. And - the Bali Nine. On the eve of their trials, the '7.30 Report' has obtained case documents that give insight into the planning and carriage of the alleged heroin caper. But first - "Trust me." That was Prime Minister John Howard's message to workers as he finally unveiled the essence of arguably the biggest shake-up of the industrial relations system since Federation. Mind you - we're yet to see the fine print - the actual laws. As well as further heavily restricting the right to strike, the government's proposed national IR system will unabashedly push workers to reach individual agreements with their bosses rather than collective deals through a union. Those contracts may exclude previous entitlements like penalty rates, smokos, leave loadings and shift overtime loadings. Predictably the Opposition and the unions have pledged to fight the proposals. But the Government's control of the Senate means the biggest threat to its workplace revolution lies in a High Court challenge by the States. Shortly I'll be talking with the Prime Minister, but first this report from Heather Ewart.

NEW GOVERNMENT ADVERTISEMENT: Over the last 10 years, something important has been happening in Australian workplaces. Australian workers and Australian businesses have started to change the way they work.

HEATHER EWART: No more shadow boxing; the Government has finally declared itself, and now the fight is on to capture the hearts and minds of Australian workers.

UNION ADVERTISEMENT: I work really hard, and I haven't done anything wrong. Why are they doing this?

HEATHER EWART: By the time it's over, it will have cost the union movement and Australian taxpayers many tens of millions of dollars. We'll be inundated with ads like these for months and depending on which side you're on, the Government has either gone too far with its industrial relations overhaul or it hasn't gone far enough.

PETER HENDY, AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY: We could've moved even further. There's a lot of red tape still in this system, a lot of complexity, but generally speaking it's right on the right track.

GREG COMBET, ACTU SECRETARY: These changes really are un-Australian. This opens the door wide to exploitation of working people.

HEATHER EWART: "Work Choices" is the brand name for the Government's direct attack on union power, which it argues will give workers and employers much greater flexibility and create jobs.

GREG COMBET: I think that is one of the most farcical names given to a policy announcement in Australian political history. There are no choices for working people in this. If the Government was serious about having choices, it would give people a genuine choice between a collective agreement and an individual contract. As it is under these laws, the employers hold all the aces and it is the employer alone who will decide what form of agreement there will be in the workplace.

PETER HENDY: The fact is that I would expect that the largest proportion of agreements in the workplace will, even after these reforms are introduced, will still be collective agreements. You can still make awards, you can still make collective agreements.

HEATHER EWART: But the government is handing employers a clear incentive to place workers on individual contracts. Despite the Prime Minister's promise of safeguards to protect many minimum award conditions like penalty rates and meal breaks, the fact is an employer can still wipe these out by inserting so-called specific provisions in the contracts. A long-running dispute at Boeing near Newcastle has been seized upon by the ACTU as an example of what's happening under existing laws, even before the new reforms come in. In future, the Government will have power to ban industrial action like this if it wants to. For the past 131 days, aircraft maintenance engineers for FA-18s have been on strike, demanding a collective agreement to be negotiated by the Australian Workers Union instead of the workers going it alone. The company has refused.

ADAM BURGOYNE, F18 BOEING ENGINEER: I'm an aircraft maintenance engineer. I've been trained to work on aircraft, to fix the Hornets. I'm not able to negotiate my employment contract with the management of Boeing.

HEATHER EWART: Adam Burgoyne is one of 27 engineers on the picket line with this warning about risks of trading conditions.

ADAM BURGOYNE: Don't sell it out, because you'll never get it back. It's not all about the dollar. It's not all about the hourly rate. It's about harmony in the work force.

HEATHER EWART: Boeing says its executives were all too busy to be interviewed today, but argues a union deal would add significant costs and most of its workers are happy with their contract, so why not the engineers? Under the new legislation, the Government says it will be illegal for an employer to force an existing employee to surrender basic rights like penalty rates and holiday pay in return for extra cash. But workers applying for new jobs won't have that protection. All up, the Government is basically asking us not just to trust it, but also to trust that all employers will do the right thing. If they don't, just go find another job.