By Paul Slape *
Local Government employees will be greatly affected by the Federal Government’s proposed changes to Industrial Relations Laws, which are due to be introduced to the Parliament later in the year. There has now been widespread public debate on these issues, not all of it helpful or illuminating. I hope to draw out the issues for employees in the Local Government sector as dispassionately as possible.
What is the Government seeking to do?
Firstly, they want to create a single national industrial relations system, using what is known as the corporations power in the Federal Constitution – that is, the power to pass laws about what companies do – rather than the traditional conciliation and arbitration power given to the Federal Government by the original authors of the Constitution.
By this means, the Government hopes to create a single industrial relations system, thereby eliminating those currently operating in all States except Victoria.
Many Local Government employees already work under Federal awards and enterprise agreements and may not think that this is a big change. In New South Wales, however, wages and conditions are underpinned by a NSW State Award established by negotiation between the United Services Union – a Branch of the Australian Services Union – with Local Government employers assisted where necessary by the NSW Industrial Commission to resolve disputes.
It is not clear whether all Local Government can be brought into a single IR system by the use of the corporations power. It is clear that State public services will not be involved in any national IR system that means that links and similarities in wages and conditions between State government employees and Local Government employment are likely to be severed.
If all Local Government is brought into the Federal IR system, the NSW Award will be converted into a Federal Award and many terms and conditions will be stripped from it.
For Local Government employees already in the Federal system, there are other unpleasant surprises in store. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) is being stripped of its power to arbitrate on wages and salaries. This is being handed to a new body – the so called Fair Pay Commission that will fix both minimum wages and all Award wages.
The Government’s decision to do this can only be because they think that wage levels set by the AIRC are too high and they are clearly looking to the new Commission to whittle away the real value of all wages over time.
At the same time, the Government has announced a new Task Force which will review classification structures in all Federal Awards, including those applying in Local Government. The objective of this exercise is also reduce comprehensive, skills and competency based classification structures designed to provide career opportunities and progression to simple minimum rates structures with no progression.
The ASU thinks that this is not in the interests of Local Government employees or local governments that depend on a skilled and professional workforce to deliver services to ratepayers.
The Federal Government has also decided to take scrutiny of certified agreements away from the public processes of the AIRC and give it to the Office of the Employment Advocate which gives employees unhappy with an agreement less opportunity to challenge it.
At the same time the Government proposes to make individual agreements – known as AWAs – both easier to get approved and less beneficial to employees. Currently, all agreements – collective and individual – have to pass the same no disadvantage test to ensure that employees are not worse off under an agreement than they would be under an Award.
The test is against the whole of the terms of the Award. The new test proposed by the Government – the so called Fair Pay and Conditions Standard – is against just four minimum standards and a minimum rate of pay. Rather than protecting the current conditions of Australian employees, the Federal Government wants to allow employers to be able to strip away all but four or five entitlements.
The Government says this will only be possible by agreement between the employer and the employee, but the Government’s laws already allow an employer to lock out an employee to force them on to an AWA – an unbelievable situation but one already enshrined in law.
The ASU hopes that no Local Government employer would do this to any employee, but some private sector employees have already done it.
Finally, the government has decided that employees who work for employers with less than 100 employees will not be able to take an action for unfair dismissal if they are wrongly dismissed. This prevents most employees in the private sector from taking unfair dismissal action. But it will also affect Local Government employees. The Union has looked at staffing levels in Local Government around Australia and found many smaller Councils which employee less than 100 staff. These employees will all be at risk.
The ASU has worked with Local Government to promote the sector and to ensure that it has the resources and the staff to be able to deliver quality services to ratepayers and other citizens. The Federal Government’s plans put services at risk as well as posing a substantial threat to the wages and salaries, the career prospects and the job security of employees.
A fuller version of this article appears on the Australian Services web site on www.asu.asn.au
* Paul Slape is National Secretary of the Australian Services Union.
