Solidarity

The Employment Advocate, whose office is responsible for the registration of industrial agreements, appeared before a Senate estimates committee on Monday. His evidence shows that WorkChoices is already being used by bosses to slash working conditions.

The OEA surveyed a representative sample of 250 of the 6263 AWAs lodged since WorkChoices kicked in, and found:

• 100% cut at least one “protected” award condition.
• 16% cut every “protected” award condition.
• 64% cut leave loading.
• 63% cut penalty rates for overtime and weekend work.
• 52% cut shiftwork loading.
• 22% froze wages during the life of the agreement (up to four years).
• Only 59% retained public holidays.

John Howard defended the AWAs, saying “84 per cent paid wages higher than the legal minimum hourly rate”. However, the legal minimum rate might be significantly lower than the prevailing enterprise agreement rate, which means these “higher” wage agreements might actually mean a pay cut — especially when the loss of overtime and weekend penalties is factored in.

Significantly, the Employment Advocate revealed that:

6% of AWAs failed to meet the annual leave benchmark in the [Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard], and would be referred to the OWS.

However, his evidence also “confirmed that since the laws had been introduced, the office no longer checked that contracts were legal.” This means that only 6% of the random sample would be referred to OWS for investigation — or 15 contracts. Assuming the sample is accurate, a further 360 illegal contracts have gone unnoticed, and those workers will be ripped off. Their dodgy contracts will be registered by the Government anyway.