Electoral labour issues outlined

INDUSTRIAL relations is shaping up as a key election issue.

Based on an analysis of public statements by the Australian Liberal Party and

Australian Labor Party several of the core industrial relations reforms that each party proposes to introduce if elected.

Labor

• Abolishing Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs);
• Removing the restriction of 20 allowable award matters in federal awards;
• Requiring employers to bargain in good faith with a union that has indicated its intention to negotiate a collective agreement;
• Ensuring a ‘no-disadvantage test’ is met for collective agreements, which would include consideration of relevant award or agreement rates of pay as well as conditions to protect workers’ rights to representation of their choice;
• Empowering the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to make binding orders to ensure that parties to a bargaining period negotiate in good faith, and to adjudicate on disputes where parties cannot resolve them;
• Giving casual workers the right to request conversion to permanent part-time positions;
• Removing all industrial matters from the Trade Practices Act and transferring them to industrial legislation, including secondary boycott provisions; and
• Abolishing the Building Industry Taskforce and establishing a tripartite building industry council.
• Liberals
• Creating a uniform national unfair dismissal system;
• Creating a new national code regulating the entry rights of union officials;
• Extending the length of enterprise bargaining agreements and AWAs; and
• Amending unfair dismissal laws to enable small businesses to fire employees more easily.

So what does this mean for employers:

Labor’s reforms would bring the federal industrial relations system closer to the Western Australian industrial relations system, in that:

• awards would cover a wider range of matters;
• there would be an obligation to bargain in good faith with unions who initiate the bargaining process;
• the AIRC would have powers similar to the Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission (WAIRC) to order parties to negotiate in good faith or risk a court imposed order (akin to theWAIRC’s enterprise order); and
• proposed agreements would be subjected to a no-disadvantage test.

However, the real significance of the changes is that employers would no longer have a choice between the current federal system and the WA system.

Currently, employers who wish to exclude the influence of unions and industrial tribunals from workplace relations can turn to the federal system where terms and conditions can be regulated by AWAs and certified agreements directly with employees.

If Labor won the next federal election, employers would have no choice but to deal with unions more directly, whether bargaining was initiated under the state or federal industrial relations systems.

If the Liberals won the next federal election, it is clear that Australia would move toward a unitary industrial relations system with a diminished role for unions and State industrial tribunals:

• the passage of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment) Bill 2002 [No. 2] would increase the coverage of federal unfair dismissal laws to all employees of constitutional corporations;
• a new national code for union rights of entry (National Code) may remove the ability of unions to use state industrial laws to gain a right of entry to sites that they do not have access to under federal laws. We predict that the National Code would be used to overcome the effect of the recent decision of BGC Contracting Pty Ltd v CFMEU, where the federal court found that the CFMEU had a limited right of entry to a site covered by AWAs; and
• extending the term of certified agreements and AWAs would reduce the opportunities for unions to take protected industrial action in support of bargaining claims.

However, unless either of the two major parties wins the election with a clear majority in the Senate, it is unlikely that the above proposals would pass through the Senate without substantial amendments from the minor parties.

The potential for key industrial reforms to be made by either party therefore depends, not just on which party wins the election but also on whether the winning party gains a Senate majority large enough to enable it to transform policy into law.

Kathy Reid – 9429 7695

Sean Redden – 9429 7618

Minter Ellison