Uncle Joe Hockey slammed academics who provided data last month showing that women were doing badly under AWAs.
His response to data released by the government’s own OEA is both lame and disingenuous – workers disadvantaged by AWAs were being paid crummy wages anyway, says Uncle Joe. In fact, in retail, most AWAs are offered precisely to get people off the collective agreements which are common in shopping centre chains. And he hasn’t even bothered to spin the rest of the report, apparently contenting himself with observing that lots of women just are low paid.
IN A blow to the Federal Government’s efforts to sell its WorkChoices reforms, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found women and casual and part-time workers on AWAs get, on average, up to $4 an hour less than workers on collective agreements.The bureau’s bi-annual detailed figures on wage levels show that for May 2006, non-managerial employees on AWAs on average earned 9 per cent more each week than those on collective agreements — but only because they worked 13 per cent more hours.
Male employees with permanent full-time jobs earned the same hourly pay whether they had an AWA or a collective agreement: $29.30 an hour, the highest average pay of any group in the workforce.
But all other groups earned significantly less an hour on AWAs than they earned under collective agreements. That included all classifications of female employees and male employees with casual or part-time jobs.
The figures show the gap between male and female pay remains stubbornly persistent, despite women steadily climbing up the ladder of workplace responsibilities. Overall, men were paid 13 per cent more an hour than women: $26.30 an hour compared with $23.20.
The biggest gap was among workers on AWAs, where men were paid 23 per cent more than women ($28.10 an hour compared with $22.80).
In response to Julia Gillard’s claim that his puffery was just “empty rhetoric”, the Minister responded by asserting that figures on wages didn’t take into account other provisions that aren’t actually related to earnings!
Of course, Joe is right, there are lots of things that aren’t taken into the earnings figures.
Of course, they too are being stripped away from the most vulnerable by Workchoices.
So called flexibility in shifts, which he refers to, is very often just giving up any control over when those shifts are. And how is it a response to figures about pay to cite non-pay factors? You can’t buy dinner with an employee of the month award.
(I know the LP spambot likes to eat big posts, but here goes…)
My favourite piece of doublethink in the WorstChoices spin is the statement Howard came out with a couple of days ago, where he linked “Australia’s prosperity” with keeping wages low.
Johnny, *I* sure as hell am not gaining prosperity if laws are specifically designed to prevent me being paid more. In fact, I’d argue the majority of Australian workers aren’t. Obviously, when Johnny talks about “Australian” prosperity he’s using a very narrow definition which counts:
a) middle- and upper-management, CEOs, etc.
b) stock holders (the people whose shares go up when wages go down, or large numbers of workers are laid off); and
c) Anybody who happens to own a mine in WA.
Clearly, he isn’t talking about students, labourers, people receiving government benefits, those in part-time or casual work, teachers, cleaners, hospitality workers, or anybody else who isn’t in an exceptionally strong bargaining position. I can’t wait ’til all these baby boomers retire and the labour market suddenly dries up – WorkChoices be damned, I think employers will be begging for employees (and providing enticements to lure them).
Well, that’s all right then.
New legislation that actually intensifies the status quo is a conservative’s wet dream, so he’s probably wondering what all the fuss is about.
Nicely skewered pussy cat, but in fact retail employees covered by the collective agreements earn reasonable wages and have reasonable conditions when ski factors are taken into account. The point of the AWAs is to reduce their pay and conditions. The equity funds hovering over Coles at the moment have no doubt factored ‘in’, the capacity to increase profits and dividends by dint of being able to reduce wage costs quite substantially.
What is occurring is a massive ‘transfer’ of income, away from wage and salary earners, towards dividends and CEO remuneration. The govenrment can ‘trick’it up all they like. It is a sign of their profound elitism, that they think people neither know nor care about matters such as their right to claim overtime or penalty rates.
oops. That should be ‘skill’factors, not ski factors.
Yes, I’d have been surprised if Coles employees got company funded ski holidays, amused.
And the females operating haul packs and diggers on mine sites and employed under AWAs should be ashamed of themselves!!!!
How dare they!!!!
Get back on an award, now!!!
You know you will be better off!!
lol, cause there’s so freaking many of them, Razor! Totally representative sample!
Since you raised it Razor, last year a young woman miner was sacked for refusing to sign an AWA individual contract that cut her award sick leave entitlements by requiring her to give 12 hours notice of being sick or else lose a day’s pay as well as be penalised an extra $200.
Wages in the AWA-dominated metal mining sector are lower than in the unionised collective agreement dominated coal sector. They are considerably lower – around three quarters of what coal miners get paid. And to get that poorer pay packet, metal miners have to work longer hours – often fourteen 12 hour shifts in a row and an average working week of well over 50 hours.
Also practically all individual contracts in the mining industry are not negotiated but are presented to new employees on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.