BY STUART MARTIN
& MELANIE SJOBERG
Workplace relations minister Peter Reith is yet again planning to tinker with his own draconian industrial relations laws, this time with the aim of ensuring that employers can cut the pay and conditions of workers in businesses they outsource.
A ministerial discussion paper, released on September 26, proposes changes to the Workplace Relations Act which would limit the Federal Court's role in "transmission of business", or outsourcing, disputes.
In rulings on trade union challenges to outsourcing, the Federal Court has established that workers who have been transferred to another agency or company should be able to keep their original pay and conditions. The rulings have been vocally opposed by big business, for which the usual purpose of outsourcing is to cut labour costs.
In December, the court upheld a claim by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) against Telstra, ruling that company employees transferred to the outsourced firm Stellar should remain covered by the pre-existing award.
In September, the court ordered the Greater Dandenong Council in Victoria to reinstate a group of home-care workers after a challenge by the Australian Services Union to an outsourcing tender. The tender was won by a company that offered a cheaper service by firing, then re-hiring, the same employees to do the same work, but on reduced pay and conditions.
The ministerial discussion paper proposes changes to prevent the Federal Court from making any further such rulings, through legislation which would state that awards and agreements are not transferred between businesses when the employees are.
More and more businesses are turning to outsourcing and sub-contracting. The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey found that more than 80% of the enterprises surveyed had outsourced at least one function between 1990-1995.
Outsourcing has also become prevalent in the public sector. While its stated aim has been to reduce costs through competition, the reality has been quite different. A report by the Australian National Audit Office released on October 12 found that the outsourcing of information technology in the federal public service has increased costs, despite the savings from job cuts.
The outsourcing of NSW rail network maintenance, meanwhile, caused a drop in safety standards for workers and increased derailments and service delays.
Outsourcing in Telstra, including the contracting out of many of its call centres, was a major part of the utility's privatisation. Tim Stewart, a former CPSU workplace delegate in the company who saw outsourcing's effects first hand, said: "The first casualties of outsourcing are jobs and working conditions. Those left behind face enormous pressure from intense monitoring and unachievable time lines, accompanied by the constant fear of being next out the door."
The experience of the ACT government's gardeners and cleaners has been similar. Outsourcing to labour hire firms such as Adecco and Spotless not only cost a substantial number of jobs, it also meant worse conditions for those left.
When they worked for the ACT government, these gardeners and cleaners were permanent full-time employees, with rostered days off, sick leave and recreation leave. Now, according to one Adecco gardener, Nick Soudakoff, company permanents are paid the same hourly rate as permanent ACT government employees, $15.50 an hour, but are classified as casual and receive no sick or holiday pay. They have to phone in each week to ask if they will be working. Adecco receives $31 per hour per worker for providing the labour.
"It doesn't make sense economically", Soudakoff told Green Left Weekly, "but it is part of their long-term strategy to eliminate permanent staff, and then management won't have to negotiate with unions".
The federal government's program to "market test" all of its functions for efficiency and cost effectiveness is pushing public sector outsourcing even further. The departments of finance and administration have already completely outsourced their corporate services sections; other departments are following suit.
The response from the CPSU's national leadership to this threat has so far been muted, focused on helping affected union members develop an internal tender so they can keep the work and therefore their jobs.
Other sections of the union are critical of this strategy, arguing that it accepts the government's basic framework of outsourcing and doesn't involve any industrial action by members or potential supporters outside the public sector.
Susan Carcary, an assistant secretary of the CPSU's ACT branch and an activist in the militant Members First group opposed to the national leadership, told Green Left Weekly: "The CPSU should really be doing much more. The branch and national executives should be putting substantial resources into this campaign with the stated aim of including all delegates and members of the union in opposing further job losses from competitive tendering or outsourcing, and against any attempt to further privatise public services and utilities.
"Reith's drive to change the rules to overturn the court decisions that defend workers rights under outsourcing should give greater impetus to an active industry-wide campaign to defend jobs and the public sector", she said.
In July, the union's ACT branch adopted a motion, put by Members First, that called for delegates' meetings and mass meetings to plan such a campaign of industrial action, but little has yet been done. Until that happens, the momentum remains with Peter Reith.
[Stuart Martin is a CPSU workplace delegate, a Members First activist and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]