Airlines: Qantas & QF Regionals

Retrospective laws needed to protect Qantas Valet Parking staff: ASU tells Senate Inquiry

By ASU-Victorian Private Sector Branch

The Australian Services Union today highlighted the recent Qantas Valet Parking AWA dispute during its submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward with Fairness) Bill 2008.

ASU Victorian Branch Secretary Ingrid Stitt told the Inquiry how long term employees at Qantas Valet Parking either had to accept the AWA terms and conditions of employment offered by the new contractor, or look for another job.

She said the final AWA offer presented to employees in Victoria resulted in altered overtime payments and a loss in conditions in areas such as accident make-up pay, parental leave, paid jury service leave, part time employment categories and protections for part time employee. She said employees in NSW lost a lot more conditions under their AWA offer.

"This recent dispute has demonstrated that WorkChoices is well and truly still alive and reaping havoc on the livelihoods of Australian workers," she said.

In Melbourne alone about two thirds of the customer service staff at Qantas' Valet Parking refused to sign the AWA and are now looking for new employment.

Ms Stitt said amendments needed to be made to the Bill to protect those forced to sign five-year AWAs as a condition of their employment.

"Otherwise these Qantas valet employees will be employed on sub-standard and unfair terms and conditions of employment until 2013, long after other employees were working under the new and fairer industrial relations system that is due to commence in 2010," she told the Inquiry.

In its submission the ASU advocated:

• The abolition of individual statutory contracts to be made retrospective to 1 December 2007. Employers should not be allowed to exploit the period between the 2007 Federal election and the passage of the current Bill. The case of Qantas Valet Parking shows how employers continue to force workers onto unfair individual contracts. In normal circumstances changes to the law would operate prospectively however the retrospective abolition of AWAs should be an exception to this general rule because it was well known and understood in the lead up to the 2007 Federal Election that Labor intended to abolish these statutory instruments if elected.
   
  
• In the alternate, AWAs made before the passage of the Transition Bill, but after 1 December 2007, which subsequently fail the current fairness test, or preferably the new 'no disadvantage test' should be able to be terminated by either party prior to the nominal expiry date of the AWA. In the current case of Qantas Valet Parking, workers have been forced to accept five year AWAs as a condition of employment. The Transition Bill should be amended to enable these employees to terminate their AWA if their AWA fails either the fairness test or the no disadvantage test. If this does not occur these workers will remain locked out of Labor's new industrial system until 2013 and will not benefit from the stated policy objective of Labor to create access to a fairer bargaining system.
   
  
• That Individual contracts presented as a "take it or leave it" condition of employment will never enable genuine or good faith bargaining on just terms. It is clear that employees acting alone can never match the bargaining power of employers and that individual agreements will result in the imposition of unfair terms and conditions of employment on individual employees.

The circumstances surrounding the AWA offer and the content of the AWA are the subject of investigations by both the Workplace Ombudsman and the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate.

Media contact: Angela Bell 03 9320 6702 or 0430 355 554.

Please note, a background brief on the Qantas Valet Parking dispute and copies of the full submission are available upon request.

For more information on the ASU visit http://www.asuvic.org/