Sue Bolton
Gippsland Trades and Labor Council secretary John Parker told Green Left Weekly that even without PM John Howard's new anti-union laws, "the bosses try it on against vulnerable workers", especially in country areas.
It's not just Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual contracts) that drive down workers' conditions and wages. Non-union agreements are also a big problem, he said.
Parker cited a company at Hayfield in Victoria, making light concrete castings for building sites, that introduced a non-union agreement for 48 standard hours over a week, without penalties for night or weekend work.
The agreement cut penalty rates to time-and-a-quarter and workers were only given eight days' sick leave. They were presented with the agreement and told to sign or leave. Hayfield is around 40 kilometres from the next town, leaving workers little choice but to sign. Eventually, after a struggle, the workers managed to defeat the agreement.
In another case, the building industy task-force, known in the building industry as "Howard's secret police", convinced a joinery shop not to re-sign up to the union agreement, and to accept a non-union agreement instead. Under the previous agreement, the employer paid for all of the apprentices' trade schooling. Under the new non-union agreement, apprentices were charged for their schooling.
Howard's legislation will "encourage employers to treat workers as subcontractors", Parker said, as happened at Kemalex Plastics in Dandenong. He cited an example from Bairnsdale, in East Gippsland, where a worker from the housing sector on subcontractor rates was told he would be paid an amount per 1000 bricks laid. One brickie knocked over a pile of bricks, which broke a window, and the company deducted the cost from his wage.
Parker predicts that if the government gets away with introducing its legislation, individual contracts won't just be a problem for workers who are not organised. "Every employer will be required to offer workers an individual contract and when a new employee starts, they'll be offered an AWA. That's how the mines were de-unionised", he said.
From Green Left Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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