Award wage deals will be more flexible

FEBRUARY 21, 2014
THE AUSTRALIAN
THE Productivity Commission will be given wide-ranging powers to recommend sweeping workplace changes, including giving employers greater rights to try to remove conditions from enterprise agreements, under the terms of reference that cabinet is finalising for its inquiry.
Employment Minister Eric Abetz will announce the terms of reference next week when he introduces a bill into parliament to allow workers to trade off more easily key entitlements, including penalty rates, for more flexible working hours.
The bill will also impose fresh restrictions on unions entering workplaces and limit their ability to get pay deals on new resource projects.
Cabinet will give the commission broad scope to identify economic gains within the industrial relations system, including the ability of employers to vary enterprise agreements, a key area of recent dispute between Toyota and unions.
Business groups have been urging the government to order specific inquiries into the range of issues over which unions can strike, variation of enterprise agreements and the ability to end enterprise agreements after their expiry date.
Employers have pointed to Toyota’s inability to put changes to its enterprise agreement directly to its workers before the car manufacturer announced it was closing its Australian operations because the union intervened and won a court order preventing Toyota’s offer being made. While the terms of reference do not specifically cite the “variation of agreements” as an area to be investigated by the commission, they will be wide-ranging enough to allow the commission to decide which areas to investigate for the greatest gain.
The Coalition promised to order a Productivity Commission review into the Fair Work Act and the industrial relations system before last year’s election with the aim of being able to consider the recommendations and seeking a “mandate” for any changes at the 2016 election. Senator Abetz said yesterday the government would introduce a bill into federal parliament next week that would overhaul Labor’s system of individual flexibility arrangements by abolishing the ability of unions to have enterprise agreements restrict their use.
Senator Abetz said the changes would allow workers to voluntarily trade off penalty rates for working more flexible hours to suit their personal situation, including coaching their child’s sports team in the afternoon.
He said the original intent of the Fair Work Act had been to allow employees to start and finish work early to meet personal commitments and in exchange they would give up the penalty rate that would apply to the earlier starting time.
“Within the initial Fair Work Act explanatory memorandum that Julia Gillard brought in, she had the scenario, or cameo, of Josh the gym instructor who wanted to start work early during a penalty-rate regime but not being paid penalty rates so he could stop work early and coach his son’s soccer team immediately after school,” Senator Abetz said.
“And the reason he was better off overall was that for him in this cameo, being involved in his son’s sports team was a lot more important to him than being able to get that little bit of penalty rate that he would have been entitled to by starting earlier.”
Asked if this meant workers would be able to trade off penalty rates for family time, he said: “That is how Labor sold it, that is how it was in their legislation, and regrettably things have been monstered to restrict the individual flexibility arrangements — and we want to free them up.
“At the end of the day, if we say the worker is better off overall, and this is the important thing, if the worker is better off overall, as determined by the worker, why should some collective agreement seek to deny the individual that right.”
Single mother Aletta Cannon, who has been working at the Bare Bones cafe in Jindalee in Brisbane’s west for four months, said she would be prepared to work on public holidays for weekend rates if she could have more flexibility to allow her to better look after her 10-year-old son, Zander. “I get a lot of help from my mother to look after Zander, but I’d like to have a job where I could work around his schedule rather than having to work around mine,” Ms Cannon said.
“Public holidays wouldn’t be a problem for me — not that much different to working Sundays — and I could get my mother there to look after my son.
“The problem is they put us all in the same box. I’m a single mum, and I’ve got different needs from the uni students, who are the other people who mainly work here.”
Currently, cafe owner Kim Machin shuts on public holidays because she can’t justify paying staff double time and a half.
“We worked out that if we had someone working on public holidays they’d have to generate $200 worth of work every hour for it to be worth our while and that’s just not going to happen,” Ms Machin said.
Under the changes, the notice period for terminating an arrangement will be extended from four weeks to 13 weeks. The current rules, including that they be optional, pass the “better off overall test” and be genuinely agreed between an employer and employee will be retained.
ACTU president Ged Kearney said the government had given employers the green light to cut people’s pay under the guise of greater “flexibility”.
“Workers and employers need flexibility but this is an extreme and hard-line stance by the Abbott government to say that a parent of a sick child should take a pay cut in order to look after their family,” Ms Kearney said.
“This is an unacceptable choice between workers earning enough to meet their living costs and their ability to look after their family.
“Minister Abetz talks about imaginary workers that want to give up penalty rates for nothing. We’re yet to find a worker that thinks this is a good deal.”
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt said the government’s failure to rule out allowing employers to make signing an individual flexibility arrangement a condition of starting a job was further evidence the government would use them as a return to Australian Workplace Agreements.
The government’s bill will also seek to wind back the current right-of-entry rules into workplaces. Unions will only be able to seek entry into workplaces if: they are covered by an enterprise agreement that applies to the workplace; the union is a bargaining representative seeking in good faith to make an agreement; or there is evidence the union has members in the workplace and they have requested the union’s presence.
If a workplace is covered by a modern award or enterprise agreement that does not cover a particular union, access would only be allowed if the union can demonstrate they have, or previously have had, a “lawful representative” in that workplace. They must also show that workers or members have requested their presence.
The bill will scrap changes that made lunchrooms the default meeting places for union visits, and required employers to facilitate union access to remote workplaces.
The government will also address employer complaints that unions have been able to effectively veto the commencement of new projects, or extract exorbitant wages and conditions by refusing to sign up to a greenfield agreement.
Under the bill, if negotiations for a greenfield agreement have not been completed within three months then a business will be able to take their proposed agreement to the Fair Work Commission for approval. The commission would be able to make and approve the proposed agreement, but subject to tests, including the existing better-off-overall test.