WorkChoices: Reform Options for Labor

By Anthony Forsyth

Kim Beazley's announcement that Labor will abolish Australian Workplace Agreements if elected to office next year has added new impetus to the workplace policy debate. But while the ALP's new billboard ads scream that they will "rip up" Work Choices, more flesh is needed on the bones of Labor's industrial relations policy.

. Early experience based on the first few months of operation of the Work Choices legislation suggests several clear avenues for workplace reform under Labor.

There is already a growing body of evidence that the new agreement-making framework is resulting in deleterious outcomes for workers. In late May, the Office of the Employment Advocate revealed to a Senate committee the findings of a sample analysis of around 5 per cent of AWAs lodged in the first month of Work Choices. This showed that all AWAs had removed at least one "protected" award condition, while 16 per cent overrode all of the protected conditions. 64 per cent of the AWAs took out leave loading, 63 per cent penalty rates, and 52 per cent shift loading. More recently, it has emerged that the Office of Workplace Services is investigating almost one quarter of workplace agreements which are suspected to be in breach of the Fair Pay and Conditions Standard.

The current debate over whether provision should remain for statutory individual agreements (like AWAs) largely misses the point. As Woodside Energy has recently shown, employers can obtain workplace flexibility through common law employment contracts. The real issue is what form of minimum standards both individual and collective workplace deals need to comply with. With awards likely to be virtually obliterated by the time Labor is re-elected, there will be little room to revive the "no disadvantage" test as it operated in the past. Instead, agreements should have to meet a modified version of the test, requiring that workers are (overall) no worse off in comparison with an expanded set of minimum employment standards. Arriving at a sensible balance between fair and decent working conditions and the productivity needs of business should be one focus of Labor's alternative system of workplace bargaining.