By Jennifer Thompson
SYDNEY — A recent decision against the Transport Workers Union in the NSW Industrial Commission, limiting the award safety net for workers covered by enterprise agreements, has sparked a call by state secretary Steve Hutchins to break from the Accord. This alliance of the leadership of the trade union movement and the federal Labor government has delivered unprecedented wealth redistribution from workers to business over the last 10 years.
The basic issue is how far the awards system will be dismantled and replaced by "enterprise flexibility agreements". The tension between the NSW right-wing unions and Labour Council on the one hand and the Labor government on the other had been building for some time before Hutchins revealed it by calling for the union movement to review its commitment to the accord.
He declared, "The ACTU and its instrument of empowerment, the Accord, must now be put under scrutiny". Labour Council secretary Peter Sams was not prepared to go so far, saying, "We haven't broken the Accord in 10 years; it would be a very dramatic step to take. It would be better to work inside and rejig it."
Hutchins went on, "Now we have agreed minimum wage outcomes, not a maximum, and given the recent submissions to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, this outcome may not be available to a majority of workers in non-union workplaces. Our union membership and that of other service industry unions are one step short of a wages break-out given the suffocating nature of wages policy."
National wage case
He was referring to the government submission for the forthcoming national wage case, which will consider the ACTU safety net wage claim and review the award system. The government recommends that federal awards be frozen and reduced to a set of 15 foundation conditions. This would junk any notion that awards could be an effective "safety net" for those who are unable to get rises from enterprise bargaining. While industry standards could be included in an award, other provisions would be negotiated over time at an enterprise level.
Federal minister for industrial relations Laurie Brereton rushed to pacify union leaders by claiming the federal government is committed to a "strong and comprehensive safety net", but this was belied by its submission to the wage case.
Peter Sams rejected Brereton's claim that the submission had been misinterpreted. "The words are very explicit; there is no confusion or complexity ... It talks about core and non-core provisions. Nothing could be more black and white."
Another disagreement has been the allocation of public funds to companies pursuing non-union enterprise agreements, from the pool of $3.8 million earmarked by the federal government to promote enterprise bargaining. Sams called for the government to cut off funding to companies pursuing non-union deals. Brereton refused: "I don't in any way see [non-union deals'] use as a weapon to de-unionise the work force".
This claim has already been refuted by a non-union enterprise agreement signed by workers on the North-West Shelf gas project. The traditionally militant and fully unionised workers have signed an agreement that would replace existing awards, giving them an immediate pay rise of 10-15% and providing that future changes to terms and conditions would be negotiated individually.
NSW ruling
What may be coming for most workers was illustrated by the September 1 ruling in the NSW Industrial Commission, against the TWU. The commission ruled that the award safety net does not include shift allowances, weekend penalties or piecework earnings. The decision, hailed by employer groups, renders the NSW award safety net a far more limited protection than that envisaged by unions and puts shift allowances and penalty rates on the enterprise bargaining table.
After September 7 talks with the NSW union officials, Brereton said he would not tolerate employers using enterprise bargaining to de-unionise their work force, but did not say how this would be prevented. He refused to give the Labour Council delegation any concessions on the future of the award system.
Sams, however, expressed a positive view of the meeting: "We expressed to the minister a widespread and fundamental view about our concerns and put in place a process by which we can have those concerns addressed". But a further meeting to discuss the award issue will take place only after the handing down of the national wage decision.
The next step for the unions and Labour Council leadership is not clear. In addition to his call to dump the Accord, Hutchins also called for Brereton to change the laws to give state Labour Councils the power to represent unions in place of the ACTU. He said it would be the only way to maintain award entitlements for workers.
"Peter Sams ... myself and other unionists will be developing in coming weeks a new agenda on industrial relations that, once advanced through to the state Industrial Commission, will be put up for debate nationally." The agenda would focus on retention of the award system and a movement away from enterprise bargaining, "the grand delusion of the current industrial relations debate".
While the fantasy of using the state Industrial Commission to maintain a strong award system has been exposed, no real alternative strategy to ward off enterprise bargaining has been put forward by the union leadership.
Indeed the only thing raised to date has been the old fairytale of waiting for Labor to win government in NSW to put things to right. In the winter edition of Southland magazine, Peter Sams says he expects an incoming Labor government to restore a "strong, relevant and effective award system", within which enterprise agreements are a "top-up to the award system". This would appear to be less than realistic given that it is the Labor Party undercutting the award system federally.
Commenting on the latest developments, Dick Nichols, editor of Solidarity, said, "These cracks in the wage system are not surprising. With profits at record levels and with the end of the recession, workers know that a lot more could be won with an old style industry-wide wage campaign. This is the only way to recover wages lost under all versions of the accord. It's also the only way to retain workers' loyalty to the unions and prevent further instances of non-union deals like that carried out on the North West Shelf project."