Media Release: New Zealand Council of Trade Unions
08 June 2007

Australian Government Compounding International Labour Law Breaches

“By passing the further WorkChoices amendments to its Workplace Relations Act the Australian Government has seriously compounded its breaches of Convention 98 on the right to organise and collective bargaining,” New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Ross Wilson told the International Labour Organisation conference in Geneva yesterday.

“The Australian Work Choices legislation is comparable to New Zealand’s Employment Contracts Act, in force in the 1990s, a period in which the disparity between rich and poor rose quicker in New Zealand than in any other developed country,” Ross Wilson said.

“It is a bitter irony that at a conference where Committees, including representatives of the Australian Government, are reaffirming the ILO’s objectives as set out in the Constitution, the Declaration of Philadelphia and the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and reflected in the Decent Work Agenda, the Australian Government has moved with legislation to compound already serious breaches of convention 98.”

“From a New Zealand perspective it is a travesty of the fundamental principles on which the ILO works that the Australian Government should turn away from its proud history of tripartite co-operation in such a manner.”

Ends.

The statement follows. Ross Wilson is available for interview at the ILO in Geneva, on his New Zealand cellphone number 0274-468-767. Geneva is 10 hours behind New Zealand, so good times to call are 5pm in the evening NZ time, and from 5am to 8am in the morning NZ time. Ross' email address is rossw@nzctu.org.nz. Or, contact CTU secretary Carol Beaumont: 027-275-7374. CTU Communications Officer Sam Huggard: 027-243-7031.

~~~~~

Statement to the Committee on the Application of Standards relating to breaches by the Federal Government of Australia of Convention 98

My name is Ross Wilson. I am President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions and, as the New Zealand Worker Delegate, I strongly support the Australian Council of Trade Union’s submission.

It is clear that, despite the previous advice of the Committee of Experts, the Australian Government has seriously compounded its breaches of Convention 98 by passing the further Work Choices amendments to its Workplace Relations Act.

From a New Zealand perspective it is a travesty of the fundamental principles on which the ILO works, but in particular the principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Philadelphia, that the Government of this fine country, with which we co-operate on everything but sporting contests, should turn away from its proud history of tripartite co-operation. This previous co-operation resulted in its widely admired national workplace savings plan, and a remarkable period of strong economic growth and productivity improvement.

Conceptually the Australian Work Choices legislation is comparable to the Employment Contracts Act which was in force in New Zealand between 1991 and 2000. During this period the density of collective bargaining was dramatically reduced and the disparity between rich and poor rose quicker than in any other developed country.

In this brief intervention I wish to address, in particular, Article 4 of Convention 98 and the impacts from the primacy of individual employment agreements (AWAs) over collective agreements. As the Committee of Experts notes in the report to this committee (p45) giving primacy to AWAs is contrary to Article 4.

As the Worker Delegate from Australia has noted s 348 of the Workplace Relations Act now specifically provides:
1. That a collective agreement has no effect while an AWA operates in relation to an employee
2. That there will no longer be a “no disadvantage test” thereby increasing the incentive to employers to use AWAs to reduce wages and conditions of employees

3. That award conditions can be displaced by specific provision in an AWA
4. That an AWA can be required as a condition of employment (“an AWA or nothing”).

This clearly establishes a primacy of AWAs over collective agreements, to the extent that the ACTU has observed that it “makes the purported ability of unions to bargain collectively on behalf of their members nugatory in any practical sense”. Yet the Australian Government argues in its very belated defence (para 51) that the Act does not promote one form of agreement over the other.

The point I wish to make Chair is that Convention 98 requires it to do exactly that; to promote collective bargaining and collective agreements over individual agreements. As this Committee well knows the ILO jurisprudence requires the Australian Government to do the exact opposite of what it is doing through provisions like section 348.

As the Freedom of Association Committee observed in respect of the NZCTU complaint on the Employment Contracts Act, Convention 98 requires that the Government ensure the encouragement and promotion of collective bargaining.

It is not enough to simply permit or facilitate collective bargaining as the Employment Contracts Act, and now the Australian Work Choices legislation, purport to do. The ILO jurisprudence is clear in requiring positive measures of encouragement and promotion of collective bargaining in law and in practice.

And the reasons are once again clearly reflected in the Declaration of Philadelphia. It is to give workers a fairer bargaining environment in a relationship of inherent inequality; the sort of inequality reflected in the following letter from a New Zealand supermarket worker to the Department of Labour during the 1990s:

“As soon as the Employment Contracts Act came in everything changed in this place we were told – now he’d do it his way. First he got rid of the union, and some were threatened that if they belonged to the union they would be down the road. The contracts were never negotiated. We were called in one by one and given this printed document with a place to put your signature. Some of the young ones were not allowed to take their contracts home for their parents to read. The first year all of us who already worked there got penal rates. As people left or were sacked, the new ones went on to a flat rate with no set amount – they were all getting different wages. Within a year there was a 90% rollover of staff.”

Collective bargaining was almost halved in New Zealand in the 1990s, enterprise documents and individual employment contracts became almost universal, and union density fell from 56% per cent of the labour force to 21 per cent by 1999.

A major contributor to that collapse of collective bargaining, which the ILO considered as evidence of the intended effect of the Act, was the primacy in law and practice of individual bargaining and employment contracts, and the restrictions and impediments imposed on unions seeking to engage in collective bargaining.

The result was not only a negative impact on wages and allowances. The climate of fear and insecurity created by the increased employer power in bargaining, the attack on unions, and the weakening ,of legal protection against unfair dismissal also had a consequent negative impact on workplace culture and on productivity and occupational safety and health.

A similar effect is already being seen in Australia. As Ted Murphy has mentioned a government survey has shown that in one three month period alone more than 1000 workers a day were being transferred from collective agreements to AWAs with consequent reductions in wages and conditions of employment.

It is a bitter irony that at a conference where Committees, including representatives of the Australian Government, are reaffirming the ILO’s objectives as set out in the Constitution, the Declaration of Philadelphia and the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and reflected in the Decent Work Agenda, the Australian Government has moved with legislation to compound already serious breaches of convention 98.

At a time when the successful country models, and ILO standards and programmes, emphasise the importance of building social partnerships, co-operating on skill development, work organisation, and innovation as the key to improved productivity and comparative advantage in high skill, high value products and services, the Australian Government seems to be embarking on a strategy which seems more concerned with politics than productivity.

Chair, I respectfully submit that the only reasonable inference which can be drawn from the Australian Government’s conduct and statements over the past few years is that it is trifling with this very important committee, and displaying an almost contemptuous disregard for the Committee of Experts.

It is not an adequate response for the Australian Government to claim that the Committee of Experts has got the jurisprudence wrong. By compounding its breach of convention 98 by legislating the Work Choices amendments, and by failing to report in a timely way, the Government has demonstrated, at the very least, an indifference to the decisions and the work of this Committee.

For these reasons I support the call by the Worker Delegate from Australia for strong conclusions.

ends

© Scoop Media