General

Australian Workplace Agreements

Hockey releases "rubbery" figures

Rubbery figures released from Joe Hockey's Workplace Authority cannot be trusted says the ACTU.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said today:

"A new report issued by the Workplace Authority is another attempt by Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey to hide the truth about WorkChoices.

"This is just more spin from the Government when the reality is its fairness test is a total failure.

"It is wrong for the Workplace Authority to claim 'We have turned the corner in completing the outstanding Fairness Test assessments' and 'that the Fairness test is working.'

"What the documents released today by the Workplace Authority actually show is that:

The fairness test backlog is getting bigger
· The backlog of incomplete assessments is around 110,000 agreements and is still getting bigger.

· This report shows a further 31,014 new agreements were lodged in September and yet only 25,000 assessments were made - demonstrating the backlog got bigger by more than 6,000.

Less than 10% of agreements have been processed and approved
· The Workplace Authority report shows less than one in ten agreements (13,386) have passed the fairness test (with or without change) since it was introduced. This is a pitiful pass rate of just 9.5% -- an abject failure on any reasonable account.

The Workplace Authority continues to use out of date and misleading data on AWA employee earnings
· The data the Workplace Authority refers to in its report is not its own, it is from a survey taken more than a year ago in May 2006 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

· The Workplace Authority receives every AWA and workplace agreement as soon as they are lodged. It should reveal its own data on the earnings of AWA employees but it has refused to do so.

· Indeed, the most comprehensive study yet on the impact of the Work Choices reforms was released earlier this week by Sydney University and found that workers on AWA s earned on average $106 a week less than those on collective agreements.

"Joe Hockey's Workplace Authority report is as dishonest as his Government's taxpayer funded WorkChoices advertising campaign," said Ms Burrow.

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/latest_news/general/20071008_hockey.html
Last Modified: 08 Oct 2007