BY JENNY LONG
SYDNEY — Affiliates of the NSW Labor Council on May 17 called on the state Labor government to split its workers' compensation "reform" package into two parts, in the latest bid to force concessions on the controversial legislation.
The unions argued that the package should be split between the proposed changes to the statutory benefit scheme for compensating injured workers, and the far more contentious proposed restrictions on the rights of seriously injured workers to sue their employers at common law.
The Labor Council has told Premier Bob Carr and industrial relations minister John Della Bosca to respond to its plan within a week, as the next scheduled session of parliament and a threatened statewide day of industrial action looms on May 29.
But as unions wait for a response from the Labor government, precious time to organise extensive industrial action on May 29 is ticking away, and a smaller rally against the government's workers' compensation bill now seems a more likely outcome than united strike action.
The resolution suggests that the changes proposed by the government to the statutory benefits scheme be brought to parliament by the end of the year, after the government has appropriately amended the proposed changes in consultation with the Labor Council.
Agreement has now been reached between union representatives and government negotiators that the American Medical Assessment Guidelines, upon which the government wanted the set benefits based, are inadequate.
But much work still has to be done to sort out how to amend the assessment guidelines and add psychological and psychiatric injuries and strengthen the right to appeal.
After these have been sorted out, negotiators will have to agree on thresholds and ensure set compensation benefits do not disadvantage workers.
Labor Council secretary Michael Costa told the May 17 affiliates' meeting the extended timetable would allow reforms to employer compliance and workplace safety to be incorporated in the bill.
It is unclear whether the government, which has so far remained publicly intransigent on its plan to push the changes through the next sitting of parliament, will come to the party. A number of Labor Council affiliates, including the 40,000-strong Public Service Association, remain pessimistic about this.
One cause for pessimism is the government's rhetoric to date, which has focussed on the costs of the existing scheme, blamed on rorting. The premier has publicly accused injured workers of causing the blowout in projected liabilities.
Well-founded claims by the construction and other unions of widespread under- and non-compliance by employers with workers' compensation insurance requirements have been largely ignored.
Sections of the media have also been happy to help Carr and Della Bosca by using government-supplied figures to attack the soft target of workers compensation lawyers. Their claims have focussed on legal expenses, sometimes exaggerating them and sometimes wrongly combining them with medical expenses, which often go through the lawyers.
The government's aim is to reduce, or remove, the ability of workers to use the courts to sue employers for injuries — something unions are still resolutely opposed to. To resolve the impasse, the Labor Council has urged that the issue be given over to an independent inquiry involving representatives of government, employers and unions.
However, some unionists fear that, by hiving off the issue of common law rights to sue and by shifting the fight from a community and industrial campaign to an inquiry, the steam will go out of the campaign, strengthening the government's position immeasurably.