General

Industrial Relations

Rudd denies new IR plan is sop to Unions

Leader Kevin Rudd denies Labor's proposed industrial relations plan is pandering to unions, saying it will restore the balance between business and employees.

Last night Mr Rudd announced another plank in his industrial relations policy, promising a Labor government would abolish a range of bodies including the commission.

It would replace them all with a single giant industrial relations umpire, to be known as Fair Work Australia.

Mr Rudd said today the plan did not cater only for unions, and would allow people to be represented the way they wanted.

"This is not some arrangement designed to assist unions," he told Macquarie Radio.

"When it comes to unions, they have a role in the economy.

"It's equally possible, under the system that we're proposing, for anyone to be represented by non-unions."

Mr Rudd said Labor's policy would simplify the industrial relations system for employers as well as employees.

"At present you've got this alphabet soup of organisations - the Office of the Employment Advocate, the Office of Workplace Services, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and the Fair Pay Commission," he said.

"Who knows where to go to for what, at present. It's a mess.

"We want to establish a one-stop shop, which actually establishes a fair and independent umpire ... to assist employers and employees, because we're concerned about fairness for wages and conditions for working families into the future."

Mr Rudd said Labor's proposal was simply designed to "restore the balance" after Prime Minister John Howard had Americanised the system.

"Mr Howard has gone too far," he said.

"These laws ... have become Americanised to the point where people no longer have confidence that their kids and grandkids when they go into the workplace can actually argue effectively."

Labor would not release the full details of its industrial relations policy at the national conference this weekend because they were still being worked out, Mr Rudd said.

"One of the things we are yet to put out, and we will, is the detail of transition arrangements between existing contracts under AWAs under Mr Howard's unfair industrial relations laws ... and the future system that we will set up," he said.

"We haven't put that policy out yet, we're still working our way through it in consultation with various business organisations.

"Of course you've got a practical problem about how you transition those people (on AWAs), because remember various businesses have already made plans based on these laws as they exist at the moment, and therefore we've got to be quite sensitive to how we fix that in the future."

AAP

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Last Modified: 26 Apr 2007