No workers' paradise
On March 30 civilisation as we knew it ended, or so the employers' representatives would have us believe: Australian workers have been granted jobs virtually for life. ACTU secretary Bill Kelty described the event as the most important since the introduction of compulsory arbitration and conciliation 90 years ago. Feel like you blinked and missed the revolution? Well, don't panic; it was only the enactment of the Industrial Relations Reform Act.
On February 26, 1993, a few days before the federal election which Paul Keating expected to lose, the Labor government signed the International Labor Organisation's convention on the termination of employment. So as B follows A, we now have a new act. It waters down sanctions against unions for secondary boycotts, sets minimum wages in states without wage-fixing tribunals and gives us yet another court. But the outcry from the bosses has been loudest over what they see as restrictions on their ability to sack workers.
The new act puts the onus the employer to justify a dismissal where it is disputed as unfair or unlawful by the sacked employee — and not before time. Grounds which don't constitute a fair or lawful dismissal under the act include: membership or non-membership of a union, temporary absence due to illness, sexual preference, gender, religion, pregnancy etc. Employers will also have to provide written notification to the Commonwealth Employment Service when intending to lay off more than 15 workers.
But before the right-wing think-tankers had worked themselves into an indignant rage, federal industrial relations minister Laurie Brereton put things in some perspective: "The government's new legislation replicates the protection that is already afforded to federal award employees", he told parliament.
Tim Pallas, recently elected ACTU assistant secretary, was keen to hose down the hotheads in business circles too; he is quoted in the March 28 Business Review Weekly as saying soothingly, "The Act does not stop fair-minded employers from dismissing employees. But it does say they have to follow due process."
The government had originally intended to exclude all casual workers from the provisions of the act (part-time workers now make up one quarter of all employees); this would have placed the legislation in contravention of the ILO convention, which clearly excludes only those workers defined as being casual for a "short period", and was scrapped. The government and ACTU are discussing what constitutes a "short period".
The act does exclude workers on fixed term contracts. This is significant given that the trend-setting mining giant CRA is moving to transfer its wage workers onto staff contracts. Although the act prohibits employers designing contracts primarily to escape its provisions, avoidance constitutes a legitimate factor in drawing up a contract.
So while the opposition gleefully seizes on a small policy difference with Labor and threatens to repeal the act, and the bosses' representatives blather wildly in the compliant establishment media, back in the real world it's all business as usual.
No, Australia didn't become a workers' paradise overnight — it remains a paradise lost to 80% of the population, the working class.