What the Cowra Decision Means for Industrial Relations

By John Howe and Jill Murray

The ruling on the Cowra abattoir case highlights the implications of the new IR rules.

When an abattoir in Cowra threatened to sack 29 workers so that some of them could be rehired on lower pay and conditions, a media firestorm exploded. The Office of Workplace Services (OWS), the beefed-up federal labour inspectorate, "investigated" the Cowra situation following a telephone call from a political adviser to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. The OWS then issued what was called a "ruling", which concluded that the Cowra Abattoir did not breach the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 because its decision was made for what the OWS said were "purely operational reasons". Incredibly, that report is not a public document, and only a media summary is available. The information on which the OWS reached this decision is also secret, so it is not possible to analyse its reasoning. This in itself marks a break with traditional labour regulation in Australia, as decisions (including reasons for decision) of the independent tribunal, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), are publicly available and its processes are open and transparent.

The key issue here is the extent to which Work Choices expands the scope for employers to sack staff while avoiding sanctions under the unfair dismissal regimes at federal and state levels.