Since WorkChoices got its place in the media sun again with the revelations about Spotlight, the Howardians have been running a robotic defence on wages:
it’s a bit difficult to make the case that the legislation is an attack on wages when 84% of the AWAs registered provide for higher wages than would have existed under these system and none provide for lower wages.
That’s George Brandis, but you could multiply the examples.
At least it’s a better line than Howard’s claim that reducing wages is good for the economy.
But it’s untrue, or at best deceptive. I often wonder whether the media’s across the detail of IR.
The Employment Advocate, Peter McIlwain, whose office registers all workplace agreements, also told the committee that 64 per cent removed leave loadings; 63 per cent cut penalty rates and 52 per cent removed shiftwork loadings. Public holidays were stripped from 40 per cent, and 16 per cent removed all award conditions, leaving workers with the rump of five basic standards the Government legislated for.
The figures, which the advocate arrived at by sampling 10 per cent of the agreements it had registered, also show that 84 per cent of workers received higher base wages. But as the case of Harris shows, a pay increase can be expensive.
The key to the last figure is the fact that AWAs can increase the dollar amount of the base hourly rate in the award, but toss out other (or all other) loadings and allowances. So 2c in the Spotlight case can be a “higher base wage” even if the workers are $91 a week worse off. Since the “no disadvantage” test was junked, it’s completely open to employers to reduce conditions with no or minimal compensation. And they have been, as the OEA’s figures show.
The media, and the ALP, need to challenge the government on this.
Update: More analysis from Trevor at Solidarity.
i wonder if the neoliberals realise the long term effect of stripping penalty rates from pay will be to remove the weekly rhythms from the week and hence reduce the importance of the ‘weekend’. personally the ‘weekend’ means nothing to me (largely because I worked graveyard shifts at a service station with no penalty rates about 5.5 years ago), but to the massive numbers of people who make a living from the ‘weekend’ leisure activities they must be wondering what will happen when workers are forced to ‘give up’ weekends or when workers realise that pay-wise there is no difference to working a wednesday then there is to working a sunday. this may make cinemas happy with even more people going to cheap ass tuesdays, but i wonder about the other sectors of the service industry that rely on weekend trading to turn a profit?
will school also not work on weekly rhythms now? wow, parents will never see their kids. child care places anyone?
There are social reasons for having penalty rates. ‘Family’ is one. Being a uni student and working fucked up graveyard shift hours is sort of ok, but what about parents working weekends, arvos, or nights?
Good post, Mark. This was my first thought when I saw Howard running that line.
He’s since changed tack, arguing that the Spotlight AWAs created jobs — but it turns out that’s not true, either.
I hope someone reading this can answer this question .
Did the employee at Spotlight actually lose $91 dollars from her usual work week or did she lose the potential to earn more if her roster was mostly weekends or evenings?
The point of this question isn’t to be difficult but it hasn’t been clearly explained anywhere .
I’m pretty sure her roster was mostly evenings and weekends, boredinHk. She went on holidays, came back to work, and found she would have lost $90/week. That’s when she came forward.
Mark, most if not all. who visit this site understand the isues.
Some applaud, others are appalled.
I am personally disgusted.
Academics, however, should undestand that criticism is the starting point, necessary but not sufficient.
Academics must also provide/theorise solutions.
I’m not sure of your point, wpd. I certainly have ideas about how an equitable workplace relations system which balances fairness and economic flexibility could be put into place (and it wouldn’t be a return to the past). However, at the moment, I think the main strategy needs to be exposing what is actually going on. The legislation is so arcane that it’s easy for the government to get away with telling half-truths which mask its real effects.
boredinHk, I didn’t see the initial press coverage of Annette Harris and the Coff’s Harbour store, but I tried to work it out from details given by Stephen Smith in Parliament. I came to the conclusion that she must have been working Thursday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. Our nearest Spotlight (Indooroopilly in Brisbane) isn’t open on Sundays. I suspect that most Spotlight’s are in smaller home-type shopping centres rather than in the regional centres (Westfield and such) where they are more accessible and the rents are cheaper.
In my post Spotlight (link in Mark’s post) I said:
I suspect the savings to the employer could be more if other conditions that don’t turn up as pay in the weekly wage are stripped away. Afterall the employer has to budget for these as ‘on-costs’.
Opening hours vary from state to state, but I imagine Coff’s Harbour may be open on Sundays for the same reasons that resort towns in Qld usually are.
Good point Brian, superannuation contributions for a start.
Your analysis is right on again, Brian.
Here in Warrnambool ( a resort town with lots of weekend opening), Spotlight does not open Sundays. Until very recently it did not open Saturday afternoons, but I think they might now have extended to 5pm. Sundays are still out.
It is possible that the new conditions might lead to Sunday openings. So from the other side you could argue that service is being extended. But the decision to open or not is likely to depend on demand (fairly weak for a specialty store).
The five minimum conditions of the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard (the Standard):
1. a federal minimum wage, minimum award classification rates of pay, and casual loadings set by the Australian Fair Pay Commission;
2. four weeks paid annual leave per year (five weeks for continouos shift employees) up to two weeks of which can be cashed out in a workplace agreement;
3. ten days paid personal/carer’s leave per year and two days compassionate leave per occasion;
4. up to 52 weeks unpaid parental leave (maternity, paternity and adoption); and,
5. maximum ordinary hours of work limited to 38 hours per week (which can be averaged over twelve months in an agreement or award) and reasonable additional hours.
My source is a printout of the official pamphlet which was attached to the online Spotlight job application form. I say was, because it seems to have been taken down from the net.
Andrews was lauding his AWAs as a U-beaut agreement with rolled gold solid safety net conditions. So you not only get a job but you get these extra conditions as well. These conditions are seen as a privilege rather than as a right.
I’m not sure about superannuation. Wouldn’t it be included in ther federal minimum wage, and covered by other legislation?
This raises the issue of supervision. I’m not sure of the technicalities here, but I did hear that the supervisory body was not investigating every individual complaint. Rather it was looking for patterns and relying on exemplarary interventions to keep employers in order. The effect of this can erode drastically over time if there are staff cuts to the regulatory body to the point where it becomes irrelevant to the practice in the real world.
“This raises the issue of supervision. I’m not sure of the technicalities here, but I did hear that the supervisory body was not investigating every individual complaint.”
This is where the Kennett deregulatory award system and later its handballing of IR to the Commonwealth went seriously off the rails in the 90s. In Western Vic the old DLI retained a couple of staff at Geelong to explain things to employers and the odd persistent employee. But it was almost impossible to get through to them.
It became maddening to employers in very small businesses who would ring us (at the CES, albeit we had no role, other than general experience with awards) in despair. The Canberra number we had for such things was even more frustrating. A business person could waste several hours trying to get through and even then not get reliable information.
There are, as Obby has made clear, many (possibly most) employers trying to do the right thing by employees and adhere to the law if they knew what it was.
An award sounded a bit red-tapish, but it actually simplified things for many employers. As AWAs came in, most employers in our district simply borrowed from the old awards. Just as it was simpler to take tax and accounting issues to an accountant, so it was easier to work from established guidelines, especially for areas like OH&S. I probably missed a business opportunity by not setting up as an award/IR”consultant”,notwithstanding that my expertise was not in that field.
There will be quite a few rogue elements like Spotlight and the various meatworks who exploit this new situation. That will create plenty more Howard-haters among employees. There are probably plenty of other employers who want to do the right thing, cannot get prompt or reliable government advice, who will want to talk to unions not for industrial peace but to try and make sense of employment conditions. A lot of them may also thing about a change of government.
Don, our experience in a large government department like education is that the union is often the best and most reliable source of information even about things like policy.
You wouldn’t want to be without it, really.
Brian, super is covered by Superannuation Guarantee Act. 9% employer contribution is based on ordinary time earnings plus wide range of allowances (including shift penalties).
So quite the nice little earner for employers taking advantage of SerfChoices.
On the question of supervision of agreements, an agreement can’t become lawful unless it’s registered with the Office of Employment Advocate. However during Senate Estimates last week OEA head Peter Macilwaine acknowledged they were registered automatically, regardless of contents.
As my wife has found out the so-called Superannuation Guarantee is not so guaranteed if the employer doesn’t choose to pay it and doesn’t use payslips.
Skribe, it sounds very much like your wife’s employer is breaking the law.
And how, Liam. Despite the fact that he was receiving a subsidy for employing a long-term unemployed he was failing to pay the legal minimum hourly wage, nor paying any additionals – super, penalties, holiday, etc. He lied when they checked up on him. He told them she was only working 32 hours when she was putting in 38. My wife wasn’t asked about her conditions. Unfortunately there is very little she can do about it. The union wasn’t interested. Centrelink wasn’t interested. The Super board is investigating (has been for over 6 months) but even they think it is grim.
Brian, you’re right. The Office of the Employment Advocate used to be required to check each agreement against the no-disadvantage test. You would think that they would now be required to check them against the AFPCS, but in his testimony at the Senate Estimates hearings, the EA said they probably won’t check every agreement, and they haven’t worked out the formula for choosing the sample that will be checked.
Peter Macilwaine acknowledged they were registered automatically, regardless of contents.
That’s not quite right, though it’s not far off. Agreements that are randomly selected for checking, and happen to contain “prohibited content”, the OEA will write to the employer for an explanation. If no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming, the OEA will remove the prohibited content. The rest of the agreement stands.
However, this only applies to things like allowing paid union safety training. Agreements that undercut the “protected by law” minimum conditions will not be modified — they’ll be registered regardless, and it will be up to the parties or the OWS to take action in the courts to fix them.
Thanks Trevor. That will teach me to rely on vauguely recalled newspaper accounts rather than check sources (which I did try to do, but stupid pdf software wouldn’t do word search on SEC transcript).
Sorry, I know this isn’t part of this thread, but coincidently my wife received a call from the investigating officer today and basically if her employer doesn’t want to pay there’s nothing anyone can do to make him. Good to know if you’re an employer and want to screw your workers.
Sorry to hear about your wife’s employer problems, skribe.
That’s another reason to regret the trashing of my old dept, the CES network. If an employer stuffed around with working conditions then, the wage subsidy agreement was simply torn up and subsidies not paid.
Although the Job Network supposedly replaced the CES, they apparently have neither the power nor the labour market expertise to do this, and don’t.
Well, when even dodgy Naomi Robson and the zero-cred mainstream Today Tonight (or whatev) team are running shock-horror reports on NoChoices, and cosying up to Combet – the coalition in are on a hiding to nothing with this one. Serves them right too – pricks.
I’ll say it. *Even Kim Beazley* can get elected on this one. And I mean against Howard. Easy.
Witness the dark horse of your electoral death galloping, Coalition. Its name is Workchoices.
Channel 10 news had a shock horror report about WorkChoices tonight – Queensland edition. A printer who was told to work different shifts which would mean that his wife would have to give up work as neither was paid enough to afford child care. When he explained this to the boss, he was sacked.
skribe, I think it is really sad that your wife can’t get what she is clearly entitled to.
I know a couple who for many years ran an industrial cladding business with projects all around Qld and elsewhere. I asked the wife about their experiences with superannuation. She said that right up until they sold their business a couple of years ago they were continually hiring experienced workers who had never been paid super by other employers.
To me this means that a government’s policy is to be judged not on the laws they pass but on the laws they are willing to enforce. I assume, then, that the Howard government believes that super should be optional rather than mandatory.
I think that some of the people who told your wife that they couldn’t help lied to her. What they should have said is that they didn’t want to help, or weren’t funded to help.
I wonder what the local member has to say. I’ve noticed that the surest way to get action seems to be to get the media involved, although not everyone wants to go down that road. I’d be reluctant myself. Afterall you can be sure that Annette Harris only had her conditions restored because of the media exposure.
Yeah, Brian, I think the worst part of it all was the response from union. They simply didn’t want to know. Cold-hearted government bureaucracy I can understand but with the new IR laws this was a clear case where they should have been looking after workers rights. Apparently not.