Graham Matthews
Unemployed workers will face no choice but to accept any job offer, regardless of its lack of penalty rates, public holidays or breaks, under the Howard government's proposed changes to industrial relations laws.
Failing to take the job could mean losing social security benefits for up to eight weeks. Under the Howard government's Welfare to Work package, many single parents and disabled workers would also be forced to accept individual contracts (AWAs), which wipe-away conditions guaranteed by awards, or lose their benefit.
Speaking on ABC TV's Insiders program on October 23, workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews made no apology for the government's draconian treatment of the unemployed, single parents and the disabled. Asked by Barrie Cassidy, "If [an unemployed single parent] is offered an AWA without conditions like public holidays and penalty rates, if they're excluded, no matter what his attitude, Centrelink is going to demand he takes the job? ... If he doesn't take the job, no matter what the conditions, he loses his benefits?", Andrews bluntly affirmed this, answering: "We don't make any excuse for this. We believe that the best form of welfare that a person can have is to have a job."
The combined impact of the Howard government's "work choices" package, along with its Welfare to Work provisions, would be that the unemployed (and increasingly, single parents and the disabled), would no longer be able to refuse to sign an individual contract with an employer on the basis that the conditions offered were substandard to award conditions.
George Wright, ACTU policy and communications coordinator, described the changes outlined by Andrews as reprehensible. "The most vulnerable people in our community would be put in a situation where employers are actively encouraged to take away their most basic conditions of work", he told Green Left Weekly. "People [will be] put in a terrible situation where they're going to be made to choose between a job with unacceptable conditions, and if they are unable to take that job they will lose their benefit."
Wright stressed that the new laws would not only disadvantage the unemployed and pensioners, but those already working. "People who are currently covered by agreements, or are on awards, or on individual contracts, will find themselves in a similar situation when their contracts come up for renewal", he said. "Anyone, at any time, even if they're currently covered by a union agreement, can be offered an individual contract which takes away basic conditions like overtime, penalty rates, public holidays and meal breaks, and they can be discriminated against by their employer if they refuse to sign on. That's what the laws are designed for."
Andrew McCallum, president of the Australian Council of Social Services, told Green Left Weekly that ACOSS is also concerned about the combined impact of welfare reforms and the IR reforms. "Specifically, we know that a lot of unemployed people have a low level of skills and experience and may not have the skills they need to be able to negotiate contracts with employers."
"What is different under this system is that if you refuse a job you are given a penalty", McCallum said. "If you receive three penalties then, if you are on Newstart Allowance, your payment can be suspended for eight weeks", he said, noting that the harsh treatment of some of the most vulnerable had increased.
Andrews' confirmation that the unemployed would no longer be able to refuse to sign an AWA that does not include basic conditions is just the latest in a long line of attacks on the unemployed, according to Socialist Alliance spokesperson Lisa Macdonald.
"It started with work-for-the-dole, where unemployed people were forced to undertake community service in return for their unemployment benefit", Macdonald told GLW. "This has been coupled with an increasing stigmatisation of the unemployed, disabled and single-parent pensioners."
"The so-called job-network was privatised", Macdonald continued, "and put on a profit-making footing, and penalties dished out to people on benefits who failed to jump through the government's hoops increased steeply.
"This latest attack takes away the last vestige of dignity for unemployed people — forcing them to accept any job — giving away conditions that the labour movement in this country has struggled for over a hundred years", Macdonald argued.
"The flow-on effects of this to all workers will be catastrophic. Bosses will be given a free hand to use the unemployed as a battering ram, to breakdown hard won conditions. This is an insidious attack by the Howard government and one more reason that the WorkChoices package must be resisted by the whole labour movement", Macdonald concluded.
"Howard and Andrews are already on the back foot over these new anti-worker laws, and unions and the community have a chance of keeping them off balance with a good showing on the ACTU-called national day of action on November 15. Now is the time to keep the pressure on", said Macdonald.
From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.
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