From today’s Crikey email:
The Office of the Employment Advocate passed into history earlier this week, as a number of agencies were amalgamated into the newly rebadged Workplace Authority. Much has been written about the oodles of new staff the authority will need to hire to administer the fairness test.
But a significant staffing change in the government’s workplace regulation bureaucracy, first announced in late June, has passed with little fanfare.
The Employment Advocate himself, Peter McIlwain, is now second in charge at the new Authority, which has a new Director – Barbara Bennett.
Sources with links to the federal bureaucracy have expressed surprise that McIlwain didn’t get the gig, and has effectively been demoted. In fact, it’s being suggested that McIlwain’s performance before Senate Estimates, where he was unconvincing in justifying both the secrecy surrounding the effects of AWAs and in rebutting evidence that the vast majority removed or modified conditions “protected by law�, is the reason for his eclipse.
Workplace Relations Minister Hockey has denied that McIlwain was pushed down:
He hasn’t been demoted at all, in fact because of the massive growth of the organisation, because of the fact that the organisation now has to administer a fairness test, and because of the fact that I think Barbara has the capacity to be a very public face of the Workplace Authority, Barbara will be an excellent director and Peter will be an excellent Deputy Director.
When McIlwain was first appointed, the government made much of his previous credentials in the public service to assure the public that WorkChoices would not be administered in the interests of employers. Hockey has been making similar statements in press releases about the Workplace Authority and the Workplace Ombudsman, but beyond noting the appointment of Ms Bennett, nothing has been said about her experience, skills and qualifications.
Bennett is promising that the Workplace Authority will operate more transparently than its predecessor. The cynical might suggest that this indicates a shift in PR strategy from concealment to trumpeting the virtues of fairness tested AWAs in an election year.
Update: Trevor Cormack investigates Bennett’s background.
I’m curious to find out what they will do when they discover as they clear the backlog of 50,000 AWAs that an agreement on which people have been relying for months fails the new fairness test. Do the parties have the option of rescinding the agreement and if so, is that just tough luck for the worker? Or do they have to amend the agreement to satisfy the Authority, with retrospective operation I assume. Either way it must be a real pain in the butt for employers. Yet their associations barely utter a word of criticism. Their hatred of unions must be pathological.
Well there is nothing so reassuring as a bright young 40 something who will be able to tell us how she juggles ‘work and family’, administering the absolute debacle known as employee rights and entitlements, on her Senior Executive Service salary and emolluments.
Or so they hope. People have just switched ‘off’ when it comes to this mob and the real economy, aka, the place where the punters live and work. This issue is fast becoming baseball bat territory, particularly for young people.
Can’t wait.
ahh amused. love ya work baby. indeed i await with gated breathe the glossy mag article of how super new female loves her kids,(baby sat and bought up by grandparents), hubby supportive, cooks, etc etc with accompanying power pose with folded arms designer power work suit and thanks to her parents. natch there will be no mention of nanny, cleaner, jims mowing etc.
Yes, and of course FX they’d never carry such an article about McIlwain, despite the fact that he also took on board a stupendous SES workload. Men are never subject to such scrutiny/glossy mag profile.
Government Gazette story here
“Trained by consultants”, I bet that was an exercise in great economic Management.
So a quick shift from voluntary compliance for employers (one prosecution in the past few years) to rigid compliance under the unfair work choices legislation?
But get this:
Surely this sort of information is vital if the process is to be seen as transparent.
Only if it’s core transparency.
amused, that should be “cricket bat territory” not “baseball bat territory”, yes?
Off topic, but more pressingly – the unFair Pay Commission has got around to reading the WorkChoices legislation, and come up with an extraordinarily miserly increase. I’m posting a rant I wrote elsewhere, lest it isn’t published there:
Reading the Commissioner’s public defence, pay rises are apparently now backward looking – ie catch up, a year behind when workers earn and need the money. This is an accounting trick.
We always thought of pay rises as prospective – to maintain wage levels into the future. And so does the Commission – but only when it wants to take into account possible effects on future inflation and employment.
The decision leaves most award reliant workers bearing the risk that inflation will be over 1-1.5%. (For ‘risk’ read ‘certainty’.)
For anyone on over $500 per week, a $10 rise is barely 2%. For those on $700 the $5 rise is an insult – a demand that they go begging to their employer.
The headlines should be: ‘real wage reduction for hundreds of thousands’. That this occurs in a protracted economic boom is mind-boggling.
It seems the ‘Fair’ Pay body sees its job no differently to the Reserve Bank.
Peter Martin tells of focus group decision.ACOSS view here.
Graham, Can’t imagine the Reserve Bank letting it’s decision be based on 20 Focus groups somehow!
Correction: for those on $700 the rise is $15. But once you reach $800pw, that falls below 2% in relative terms.
Ken asked what happens to an ‘un’fair AWA. My understanding is that the employer is obliged to rectify it in two ways: 1. by re-filing an AWA that provides ‘fair’ compensation, and 2. make back pay (god knows how that works if the compensation is non-monetary).
An employer can’t ‘rescind’ the employment relationship as such. They could terminate the underlying employment relationship – ie dismiss the worker. In theory, a worker might challenge this as ‘unfair’ dismissal. The employer would argue the original assumptions no longer exist – in effect ‘operational’ reasons. The employee might have to go to the federal court (ha, ha) to argue the dismissal is ‘unlawful’ – discrimination due to a lawful entitlement. Maybe we’ll see a union run an ‘unfair’ dismissal case on this soon, if only to highlight the issue. (No Fed Court case would be able to be run this side of the election).
In many cases of course the employer (of under 100 workers) could just terminate at will whatever the AWA said.
Indeed. That is why for around 85% of Australia’s workplaces, everyone is now effectively, a casual, minus of course, those cumbersome, inflexible, and totally unproductive loadings. It seems the punters are just lov’n it! All that creative risk, and the excitement of not knowing what is going to happen every time you step into the workplace. No no, no, it’s true, they love it! They tell Malcolm, Matt, Michelle, Steve, Paul and Dennis, every time the Press gallery just gets out there, and you know, chews the fat and shoots the breeze with the ‘mob’. Trooly rooly!
Graeme are you sure about that? Has the Commission issued some sort of clarifying statement? The relevant order reads:
Basic periodic rates of pay, other than those rates specifically adjusted by Section D of this wage-setting decision, are increased in the following way:
(a) basic periodic rates of pay of up to, and including, $18.42 per hour are increased by $0.27 per hour; and
(b) basic periodic rates of pay more than $18.42 per hour are increased by $0.14 per hour.
I certainly interpret this as per your original comment, as clearly does the ACTU.
Ken, my apologies. I should have trusted my quick reading of the decision summary, rather than the later media report I saw. (Blogging whilst on family leave, with two infants swirling by the computer, is my lame excuse).
I’m surprised the Commission is concertina-ing wage levels this way. The old Commission tried this then had to later correct it, as it was flattening wage scales too much. It can’t be to encourage bargaining at the $700pw level, as bargaining has been around for 15 yrs now.
I can only surmise they would like to move to a something closer to a single (ie absolute) minimum wage, a la the US model. Which is the logically conclusion of shutting down the award system.
Looks like it’s an attempt to start a brawl with the Maritime unions.
IN a move that could shut maritime unions out of the docks, Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey has approved the transfer of thousands of Patrick stevedores to a sister company covered by Comcare, the government’s workers compensation scheme.
The Australian Financial Review today reports that under the proposed restructure of Asciano, the holding company for Toll Holdings’ former Patrick and Pacific National assets, 5,336 full-time equivalent positions would be transferred to the much smaller Pacific National (ACT) Limited in September.
If, under the change, Asciano becomes a self-insurer with Comcare, its workers would come under federal occupational health and safety laws, meaning union officials would have to give 24 hours’ notice to attend any Patrick dock.
Under most state schemes, union officials have instant access to sites to investigate workplace accidents.
The paper says the move has angered unions, which believe Comcare lacks the staff and resources to properly look after highly specialised and risky work such as stevedoring.
Mr Hockey approved the move on June 18, according to documents obtained by the newspaper.
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