Fight For Rights in a New Era

Union leaders met in Canberra last week to discuss the scrapping of the Liberals’ Work Choices IR laws.

The 2008 ACTU Leaders Forum involved over 200 union leaders and officials from around the country. They vowed to “take on big companies that don’t respect the rights of employees and continue to exploit workers”.
Unions are concerned by the fact that around 1,000 workers a day are being put onto AWA individual contracts by employers rushing to lock their staff into job contracts with lower wages and conditions.
ACTU President Sharan Burrow said: “It is very disappointing that so many employers are still using the Liberals’ unfair Work Choices IR laws to undermine the wages and conditions and the rights of their employees.
“Given the emphatic rejection of Work Choices at the recent Federal election it is well and truly time for all employers and the Liberal and National Parties to abandon their support for AWAs and begin sitting down with their employees and unions to negotiate collective agreements."

More positive steps
The Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council (WRMC) has also met to discuss the development of new workplace relations legislation that would replace Work Choices.
At the meeting in Melbourne last week, the ministers confirmed that the legislation would be formally introduced into parliament on the first sitting week of 2008.
The legislation will initiate a number of changes, including:

• the prohibition of making of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs)
• the creation a new form of individual agreements (Individual Transitional Employment Agreements) for limited use during the transitional period
• the implementation of a no-disadvantage test for all new agreements, and
• the appointment of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to undertake the award modernisation process.