Rights at work

WorkChoices undermines “common good”

By the ASU - fighting for your rights at work

The WorkChoices laws undermine Australia's commitment to the "common good" as the basis of industrial relations policies, an ASU National Industrial Officer told a public forum seeking to find a Christian response to industrial relations (IR) policies and practices.

For 100 years Australia has supported collective approaches to workplace issues which emphasised community, equity, fairness and justice for all. The Federal Government's extreme laws which promote individual contracts over collective approaches undermine not only all standards and conditions of employment, ASU National Industrial Officer Keith Harvey said, but are deliberately designed to weaken the ability of employees to act together to protect and improve their living standards and workplace experience.

Keith was one of four speakers including ALP Victorian Senate Candidate Jacinta Collins, Anglican theologian Dr Charles Sherlock and the Victorian Liberal Shadow Minister for IR, Robert Clark, MP, who addressed the lunchtime gathering in Box Hill on Thursday, August 16. The full text of Keith's presentation follows.

Lunchtime forum: God and Industrial Relations – A Christian perspective on IR

Thank you Graham and thanks to the Box Hill Ministers Fraternal for organizing this event.

I have about seven minutes to say what I think is wrong with the current IR laws in this country. As a Christian and a trade unionist who has worked everyday for the last 18 months advising union members about the WorkChoices legislation, I have given this a lot of thought.

I believe that Christianity and the trade union movement share a large number of very significant values. These include:

• a belief in the equality of all people,
• a belief in the importance of community,
• a commitment to fairness and justice for all

These values are sometimes summed up as the ‘common good’.

Work is at the core of our everyday lives – it determines so much of what is important to us: including things as basic to us as our standard of living – which includes our ability to feed and house ourselves and our families. Most working families have only their income from work to sustain them.

At its highest level, and for many Christians, work is the means by which we can be part of the on-going work of creation and how we contribute to the improvement of society on a continuing basis.

In my experience, how we treat people at work reflects how we regard and treat people generally – this applies to each of us personally but it also applies to how the law treats ordinary people at work.

Under WorkChoices any notion of the common good underpinning industrial relations has gone right out the window. Fairness, equality and community have all taken mortal blows.

If I am asked to sum up what’s wrong with 1500 pages of extremely complicated legislation and regulations in one sentence I say:

WorkChoices is deliberately designed to promote individualism instead of the common good.

WorkChoices does this by:

• Promoting individual workplace agreements over all other forms of agreement and allowing employers to offer them at any time – even when a collective agreement is in place – this would be an unfair labour practice if done in the US or Canada and should not be allowed here. Once an employees signs an individual agreement it is almost impossible to return to a collective agreement

• By allowing employers to dictate agreements to individuals, e.g. at the point of engagement, an employer can make an individual agreement dictated by the employer a ‘take it or leave it’ condition of employment – individual employees have no bargaining power in these circumstances and these agreements thus become unequal treaties based on that unequal bargaining power

• By removing a fundamental human right of employees – that is, the right to collective bargaining. Australia has signed international treaties guaranteeing this right but under WorkChoices it is the employers who get to choose which form of agreement they will have with their employees – employees have no right to have their employer bargain collectively in good faith even if this is desired by a majority of employees.

• By removing any semblance of balance between the rights of employees and employers, for example in regard to the taking of protected industrial action.

WorkChoices also undermines the common good

• By eliminating almost entirely the right to independent arbitration of disputes to settle disputes justly and in the common or public interest – access to binding arbitration is only available through workplace agreements and therefore only if the employer agrees to a binding arbitration clause

• By removing the Award safety net and replacing  it with just five minimum conditions of employment

• By letting market forces play an increasingly unchecked role in IR – and by putting the economy before people

• By allowing unfair treatment of employees, e.g. by allowing employers which have 100 or fewer employees to unfairly dismiss employees.

Christianity teaches concern for one another. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus told us to love our neighbour as ourselves.

From the earliest days of Australia, this country – drawing on both its social egalitarianism and its Christian beliefs – decided that workplaces should be places where concern for one another would be a central value.

Australia was formed as a “common wealth” – a place where the common good was promoted. We did not form this nation on the basis of selfishness, or on an attitude of “I’m all right, Jack – too bad about the rest of you!”

We decided not to be a loose collection of individuals at work but a community of people based on common values and fair standards for all.

We promoted love of neighbour and the common good through collective, community based action in the interests of all, not just the interests of a few or of just one section of society.

At work, the common good means that industrial relations should not be determined by the exercise of raw unchecked economic power – one class against another – but by a balanced system involving as far as possible, equality of relationships, the principles of merit and equity and the public interest, mediated where necessary by the State.

However, under WorkChoices, employees are increasingly denied the ability and the opportunity to work together collectively – which is of course the only means they have to match the bargaining power of their employers.

Ecclesiastices 4: 9-10 says: “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the one who falls down and has no one to help him up”.

WorkChoices is systematically attempting to destroy the ability of employees in this country to work together in their best interest and in the interest of the common good.

The WorkChoices legislation is designed to stop employees from helping each other up. It should be repealed.