Public Sector Wages

Workers vote YES on collective choice

By ACTU

New national polling released today shows that 86% of Australian employees believe that industrial relations laws should require employers to collectively bargain with their workers if that is what the majority of employees want.

The poll of more than 600 employees which has been released by the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU) also found that 62% of workers believe they will be worse off under the AWA individual contracts promoted in the Federal Government's industrial relations plans. Sixty-two percent are also concerned that individual contracts give all the power to employers.

ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said: "The polling results support the ACTU's challenge to the Federal Government to live up to its rhetoric of 'employee choice' by giving Australian workers a legal right to bargain collectively with their employer if they democratically vote to do so. This is a right workers in other developed countries like the United Kingdom and Canada already have.

"The Federal Government talks about choice for workers, but what their proposed workplace laws are really about is giving greater power to employers. Under the Government's proposed system of AWA's (individual contracts) Australian workers will have no rights at all to bargain collectively with their employer. All the choice will be with the employer.

"Under the Government's laws it will be harder for workers to collectively bargain and easier for employers to dictate the terms through individual contracts. Employees will be made to sign an AWA just to get or keep a job.

"The problem is that the overwhelming majority of individual employees do not have equal bargaining power with their employer. As Family First Senator Fielding put it, how can a check-out employee be expected to bargain with Coles Myer? How will young people in particular, or a person with limited English language and literacy skills cope?

"If exploitation and unfair treatment is to be avoided, employees must have the right to join together in the workplace and collectively bargain. Collective bargaining brings some balance to the workplace. That is why the right to collectively bargain has been internationally recognised.

"Experience in Australia and overseas has shown that individual contracts can lead to rip-offs and unfair treatment. In a recent case here in Australia 15-year-old workers were being made to sign individual contracts that paid them 25% less than their award entitlements.

"One of the ways to protect against this sort of mistreatment is to ensure workers have a genuine right to bargain collectively. Employees in Great Britain and Canada for example have a right to a democratic workplace vote in which they can express their desire to collectively bargain with their employer. The employees can vote by majority to decide the issue. It's a democratic choice which binds all employees and the employer. It's the same democratic basis upon which we elect governments - the majority rules.

"It's time that the pros and cons of such an approach were debated in Australia. If it's good enough for the Government to use Great Britain as a model for the new 'Fair Pay Commission' it's appropriate to look at the British workplace bargaining rules as well.

"Why won't the Australian Government give workers a genuine democratic choice in the workplace?"

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

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/latest_news/public_sector_wages/20050905_bargaining.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005