Graham Matthews
Barely one week after the federal government's anti-worker legislation became law on March 27, and following a spate of sackings nationally — the most publicised being the Cowra Abattoir workers in NSW — the new power that Work Choices gives bosses is becoming clearer.
On April 4, less than a week after it had summarily sacked 29 workers, the management of the Cowra Abattoir — under pressure from the mass media, the government and the unions — decided to reinstate them.
The Cowra workers had been informed on March 31 that for "operational reasons" — combining the cattle and beef slaughter lines — their jobs had to go. But the 29 were told that after five weeks they could apply for 20 jobs on the new combined slaughter line, provided they accepted an individual contract of up to $200 a week less. This is despite the enterprise agreement covering the pig slaughterers which had 12 more months to run.
While the Howard government's selling of Work Choices has sought to placate nervous workers, arguing that employers could not summarily reduce wages and conditions, the reality is very different.
Workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews quickly realised that the haste with which the Cowra Abattoir bosses had moved to exploit the new laws could be the spark for a huge fight, and he sent Office of Workplace Services (OWS) officials to persuade the bosses to retreat. Arguing, on the one hand, that the abattoir bosses had "jumped the gun" sacking workers too quickly, Andrews also said that they had failed to adhere to the new laws. Andrews also ran the line that the OWS acted quickly to ensure the fairness of the new laws was upheld.
But the Cowra incident is only one of many such cases of bosses rushing to invoke their newly given power.
John Bornstein, a principal solicitor with Maurice Blackburn Cashman, told Workers Online on April 3 that the federal government had inserted a new clause into Work Choices to make it harder for employees to get their jobs back if they were sacked and replaced with cheaper labour. Section 792(4) of the new law was added to make cases such as the Cowra Abattoir or Patrick Stevedores in 1998 harder for workers to win.
"Both John Howard and Kevin Andrews are being disingenuous, or they are admitting they don't know how hard it will be for workers to win these cases in the future", Bornstein said.
"The purpose of this new clause in Work Choices is specifically to make it very easy for employers to sack workers on enterprise agreements and to replace them with cheaper labour, or to offer their jobs back on lower wages and conditions", Bornstein told Workers Online.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet agreed that the abattoir bosses had backed down as a result of government pressure, but said that the new laws do allow bosses to sack workers and rehire some at lower pay. "The government, in the new legislation, has watered those provisions right down because unions have been able to use those provisions to try and protect people. All that has happened [in the Cowra dispute] is that the government's got into a panic about adverse media, and it's brought some pressure to bear on the company to back away", Combet said on April 4.
Combet also pointed out that had the sacked workers not belonged to a union, their case would not have got the media prominence it did, a factor which helped their reinstatement.
Sackings
Workers Online also reported that a medical receptionist in Sydney was summarily sacked after more than 20 years' service on March 31. Her "offence" was to seek to negotiate the terms of a new work contract. As the surgery employs fewer than 100 workers, she has no recourse under the unfair dismissal provisions, while a case for unlawful dismissal would cost thousands of dollars and have no guarantee of success.
In another case, a greenkeeper was sacked on the spot by Windsor Turf Supplies after questioning the quality of turf sent to a customer. Mission Electrical sacked an electrician from a development on the NSW south coast, replacing him with a television repairer to cut costs. The electrician had queried why payments were not being made into his redundancy fund as required under his agreement. "I guess they thought that made me a trouble maker", he told Workers Online.
Bosses are also using the new laws to sack sick and injured workers. Six of the nine workers sacked from Triangle Cables in Melbourne on March 28 were receiving workers' compensation payments. In Nanango Shire Council in rural Queensland, a librarian of 14 years, who was on sick leave, was sacked by way of a fax sent on the morning that the new laws came into operation.
In South Australia, two apprentices were sacked the day Work Choices came into affect, breaching state legislation that protects apprentices from being dismissed. Fighting to mollify concerns, Andrews said that the sackings were not lawful, as Work Choices does not over-ride state laws protecting apprentice's rights. Unions South Australia is to challenge the apprentices' sackings in the state's courts.
Conditions attacked
The ACTU has also exposed the government lie that conditions such as penalty rates are protected under Work Choices. Anthony Longland, a partner at Freehills, one of the law firms that the federal government used to draft the Work Choices legislation, was quoted by Workplace Express as saying that award provisions such as penalty rates for overtime, shift work, public holidays and weekends were "protected but not protected", as they could be abolished in a Work Choices agreement. He described the provisions in the Work Choices legislation that "protected" these conditions as "smoke and mirrors".
Combet agreed with Longland, saying he wished the PM would be "more honest" about the effects of the new IR laws.
The much vaunted "protection" of holidays such as Christmas, Good Friday and ANZAC Day, that National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce made the price for his support of the legislation, also appear to be hollow. La Trobe University law lecturer Jill Murray wrote in the April 3 Melbourne Age, "If you're asked to work on Good Friday, you'll need to show good cause why shouldn't do so".
But judging that "good cause" is, of course, up to your boss. "Work Choices leaves entirely to the discretion of the employer what constitutes a valid personal reason for refusal, and how to weigh this against the needs of the business. The reality is that vulnerable workers will have to work on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Anzac Day and all the other public holidays if their employer requires them to", Murray said.
Penalty rates for public holidays are not protected under the legislation either, meaning the potential abolition of public holiday entitlements for the industrially weak.
Susan Price, acting president of the National Tertiary Education Union at the University of NSW told Green Left Weekly that Work Choices has been designed to strip workers of practically all rights at work. "All you're left with is the minimum wage — averaged over the whole year, that's 38 hours of work a week (although the boss can force you to work unpaid overtime also), two weeks' annual leave, a few days' sick leave and unpaid parenting leave.
"The laws are so broad, and the bosses have such deep pockets, that seeking justice through the courts is no answer either. The only avenue left to workers is to take up the fight on the ground. A well-built industrial and political campaign by all the unions is the only solution. Starting with June 28, we need to put the federal government — and the Labor Party — on notice that we won't accept these attacks.
"Workers will not give away hard-won wages and conditions without a fight. And if it's an old-style battle that the bosses want, then it's an old-style battle we should give them", Price concluded.
From Green Left Weekly, April 12, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.