La Trobe Law Forum - Employment law

Valuing Work : Fair Work Act

nospam@example.com (Jill Murray) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:46:22 +1000

Co-authored with Anthony O'Donnell

Academics in the labour law field are bracing themselves for the flood of words, opinions, decisions and policies which will flow from the passing into law of Labor’s new workplace law, the Fair Work Act. The Fair Work Act replaced Work Choices, the controversial and politically disastrous legislation of the former Coalition government.

The Act creates a multi-tiered regulatory system. The contract of employment is the first level of regulation. What’s more, only workers who are parties to such a contract are covered by the Act. All employees have the benefit of the second level, a national set of minimum standards included in the legislation. On the third level, modern awards will cover just about all eligible employees except those earning more than $100,000 a year. The awards elaborate on and supplement the legislated standards. Finally, the system of enterprise bargaining adds a fourth tier. This has been revamped (with a duty to bargain in good faith and a right of union recognition where a majority of workers wants it) but otherwise continues in much the same form as before.
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A New Deal for income protection?

nospam@example.com (Anthony O'Donnell) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:42:17 +1000

Last Tuesday ACTU President Sharan Burrow used the council's congress to declare that transforming social protection and social insurance is now 'at the top of the union agenda'.

Many will see this as a fresh departure for the trade union movement. Unions have been traditionally concerned with fair wages and conditions for those in work, rather than alleviating the hardship of those who find themselves without work.

That isn't the whole story, of course. The 'accord' that the ACTU brokered with the federal Labor government in the 1980s saw wages growth traded off for significant social policy advances: the introduction of Medicare, a revamped family allowance system (the context for Hawke's infamous 'No child will live in poverty' pledge) and the bedding down of compulsory superannuation.

Nevertheless, Australia differs from many European countries where trade unions, along with employers, play a substantial role in the governance and administration of social insurance schemes and employment services.

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The Umpire Strikes Back – Australian Industrial Relations Commission back in charge of industrial relations?

nospam@example.com (Jill Murray) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:39:08 +1000

Australia’s unique system of labour regulation gave rise to an extraordinary institution, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. This body has been at the centre of the maelstrom of controversy over what kind of industrial relations system Australia should have. Under the former Coalition Government’s Work Choices reforms, the AIRC was largely eviscerated. Its century-old powers to prevent and settle industrial disputes by conciliation and arbitration were largely gutted. The AIRC’s awards could be avoided (and the protections and entitlements therein lost to employees) by the simple expedient of making a new agreement under the Act. This included the controversial individual statutory agreements known as AWAs. The Commission’s capacity to devise national employment conditions to deal with changing economic and social needs was abolished.

What would be lost under Work Choices was the multi-faceted ability of the Commission to deal with matters quickly, cheaply and with creative attention to many different voices. The AIRC had been required to act having regard to the public interest, another important facet of its role lost in the new institutional arrangements under Work Choices.

The Rudd Government was swept to power with a mandate (as the Prime Minister says) to ‘tear up’ Work Choices. But what does this mean for the venerable AIRC?
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