By James Vassilopoulos
SYDNEY — "Fair go in NSW" proclaimed an article in the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) journal, describing the new NSW industrial relations legislation. The act, drawn up by the state's Labor government, became effective last September.
At the federal level, the Liberal-Democrat Workplace Relations Bill is now law. In comparison with that, most other industrial legislation may seem fair. Does this hold true for the NSW act?
The legislation applies to 1.7 million workers on state awards. Its highlights include:
- awards as a fundamental feature, with the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) empowered to set awards as "fair and reasonable conditions of employment";
- a 40-hour ceiling on a work week, and at least one week of sick leave;
- enterprise agreements under the supervision of the IRC;
- scope for non-union agreements between workers and bosses;
- one year of unpaid maternity/paternity leave;
- some protection for part-time workers, but no rules governing casual work;
- individual contracts, with unions having the right to inspect them;
- union officials' right of entry requiring no notice for lunchtime visits and 48 hours' notice for inspecting wage books or award breaches; and
- women's entitlement to equal remuneration, including over-award payments.
Unions have responded enthusiastically to the legislation, with the LHMU going so far as to claim that "NSW workers are now the best protected in Australia".
Employers have not objected strongly to the new legislation because their associations were involved in negotiations which led up to the act, and because the act replaces the 1991 act, which was widely seen as a failure.
The unions' defence of the legislation as worker-friendly deserves to be viewed sceptically. Labor-controlled unions are tempted to base their arguments on a comparison between the NSW act and the Liberal federal legislation. But they are on flimsy ground here, and a closer look at the two laws suggests that the one redeeming feature of the NSW act is that under it workers lose out to a lesser degree than under the federal legislation.
Major problems with the act include:
- its provision for individual contracts;
- the acceptance of enterprise bargaining arrangements, which undermine industry-wide agreements and which in the 1980s were considered a New Right measure;
- punitive measures against unions, including deregistration and penalties of up to $20,000 a day; and
- the failure to regulate casual work (which now accounts for 25% of all work).
The NSW legislation is very similar to the federal Labor government's 1993 industrial relations act. Since then, enterprise bargaining has been responsible for a serious deterioration in working conditions. This has been starkly and systematically recorded in a Department of Industrial Relations report called Enterprise Bargaining 1995, released in October 1996.
An article published in the October 23, 1996 issue of the Financial Review noted that "There has been an extraordinary fragmentation of the labour market after five years of deregulation, with a growing inequality in wages". The article documented the losses workers have suffered under this legislation and through enterprise bargaining: 58% of the workers surveyed said that the work effort expected of them had increased; half of employees felt more stressed; the gender pay gap widened; workers who rely on award "safety net" increases are 2-3% behind those in most enterprise bargaining agreements; part-time and casual workers now are about 50% of the work force; the average working week for full-time workers is 42.6 hours.
These trends are likely to continue under the NSW legislation. Some NSW unions may switch from federal to state awards in an attempt to evade the Liberals' legislation, but workers can expect little relief through such tactics. The fact of the matter is that workers and their rights are under attack from the Liberal and Labor parties alike.