Help me make sense of Australian industrial relations reform

December 9, 2006 4:57 AM

Help me make sense of the industrial relations reform (WorkChoices) that has taken place in Australia since the last federal election.

Who do the changes benefit, and who do they disadvantage? Are they ultimately a good thing or should they be reversed? They've been in place for a while now, how are they shaping up in practice? I don't even know if I'm asking the right questions! So far all of the sources I've come across have been either extremely critical of the changes or quite the opposite. Either one side is overreacting, the other side is downplaying, or (more likely) the truth is somewhere in between. Where do I go for reliable explanations? I'm still a student at university and the money I earn comes from research scholarships so I don't even have any personal experiences of the changes.

I'm not trying to incite a political argument although I acknowledge that there are split opinions on the issue. I am asking this because it may well be an important issue at the next federal election and I want to be informed. All reasoned explanations and reliable, well-informed sources are welcome.

Related question: Was IR reform an issue in the the 2004 federal election campaigns, or was the idea introduced after the coalition won?

posted by teem to law & government (3 comments total)

Wikipedia has an entry and it sort of fits into that "somewhere in beween" place you talk about.
I'm sure I've seen something else online that provided a nearly neutral breakdown of what the changes mean. I'll keep looking.
posted by bunglin jones at 6:18 AM on December 9, 2006

Anecdotal answer to your related question: IR is pretty much traditionally part of any federal election - it's the simplest point of differentiation between the two parties (Labor = workers, Liberals = bosses), and so tends to be the focal point for the media. But I don't remember "WorkChoices" itself being a major election issue as such - it raised its head before the election, was barely discussed during the campaign (except in a simplistic Labor "it's evil" / Liberal "we haven't even told you what it is yet!" sense), and was then re-awakened afterwards with the usual claim of 'now we have a mandate to do it'.

Wikipedia entry for the 2004 Australian Federal Election.

Now, my old lefty sensibilities make me pretty biased against "WorkChoices", so consider what I say with that in mind. My biggest complaint against AWAs is that very rarely are they actual 'agreements' - except in the "if you want to work here, you must agree to this" sense. For all the happy, sunny, touchy-feely talk about employees being able to negotiate one-on-one with their boss to reach an outcome that is mutually beneficial, in my experience it just doesn't work that way - it's "here's your new agreement; sign it or goodbye". Size &/or attitude of employer is a big factor in how 'good' the deal is - a decent small business is more likely to offer a better deal and/or actually negotiate than a larger organisation.

In the "bad old days" (according to the Government) it worked roughly like this :
a) The government set a minimum wage.
b) Under the award system, minimum rates of pay for various types of work / skill sets were negotiated between employee groups, employer groups, and the Government (in the form of the Industrial Relations Commission). These became the base pay rates for that industry/skill statewide (for State Awards) or countrywide (for Federal Awards).
c) Employees as a group/union and particular employers/industry groups were free to negotiate a deal above and beyond the award.

Under WorkChoices, (a) has been reduced to a "Fair Pay Commission", with more emphasis on "this is what the government wants" than "this is what you need to live"; (b) is effectively gone; and (c) has been nobbled significantly by removal of the 'as a group/union' and 'above and beyond the award' phrases.

But the biggest single change in WorkChoices? Pre March 2005, if you were previously on an award but signed an AWA, when that AWA expired you returned to the award. Post March 2005, you no longer have that option - it's sign the new AWA, or leave. Gradually, awards and enterprise agreements will disappear, to be replaced by individual contracts.

(FWIW, I was lucky (?!) enough when I left my last employer to get a large redundancy payout (think 10x the 8 weeks pay the Government touts as "industry standard"), which I'm hoping to use to pay my way through a Batchelors degree. My trade skills are so specialised as to be near-useless outside my original industry, and I swore I'd never go back there - too much history of government interference, using it as a testbed for their philosophies, and it's shaping up for a big fight between what the new management want, what the government wants, what its competitors want, and what really needs to be done...)
posted by Pinback at 6:34 PM on December 9, 2006

Oh, and you might like to check out some of the older entries on Andrew Bartlett's blog - particularly those relating to the 2004 election campaign and workplace relations.

Despite being a Democrat, he's a remarkably sensible guy ;-)
posted by Pinback at 6:51 PM on December 9, 2006