If you're not aware of Rear Vision, it's an ABC Radio National program that's free to podcast and each week "...puts contemporary events in their historical context, answering the question, 'How did it all come to this?'".
It's certainly one of my favourite podcasts probably because I've learnt so much from it! Rear vision knows no bounds covering a diverse range of subjects such as finance, geopolitics, technological advancements, business and culture.
This episode investigates some of the key movements in industrial relations in Australia from the late 19th century to today. I suggest you listen to the episode if you get the chance. Here I'll draw out some items and quotes I found particularly interesting.
Australia and New Zealand are unique:
The system of conciliation and arbitration that evolved in Australia from 1904 onwards was very unusual by international standards. The distinctive feature was that minimum terms and conditions were governed by awards made by an independent tribunal required by law to take into account public interest. They did so on the basis of representations made to them by employers and their representatives, and employees and their representatives. Apart from New Zealand, no other developed country went down that path. - Kerry Phillips
Probably not too surprising but interesting nonetheless. One item I found particularly unique was when I compared Australian employment law to Singaporean employment law in my client groups. In Australia the Fair Work Act 2009 has almost universal coverage (barring some exceptions). However in Singapore, the Employment Act does not cover anyone in a supervisory, managerial or executive position earning more than $4,500SGD per month (around $51,000AUD PA). I'll admit I'm certainly not an expert on Singaporean employment law however in my experience this situation puts an even greater emphasis on the use of contractual terms driving employment conditions.
Looking to Europe and the United States also shows a very different industrial environment to Australia.
What they tended to do, particularly the European democracies, they tended to use legislation to lay down minimum terms and conditions. There are some countries in Europe that do have minimum wage mechanisms where there are periodic adjustments by independent tribunals or by government on the recommendation of independent bodies, and the United Kingdom would be an example of that. But there are still countries that don't have any minimum wage mechanism at all. Germany is one. There is in fact considerable debate in Germany at the moment about the adoption of a statutory minimum wage. But the German system has relied on collective bargaining, and particularly on collective bargaining at the industry level rather than at the workplace level. So you would have a collective agreement that applied to the entire coal industry or the metals industry rather than agreements that applied to a particular workplace. And that system is breaking down and that's one of the reasons I think why they are looking at the possibility of introducing a statutory minimum wage.
In some developed countries, most notably the United States, they didn't use legislation either, so workers in the United States, in many jurisdictions, have very limited legal protections of their terms and conditions of employment. So in the United States there is a minimum wage, it is set out in an Act of Congress and it is very, very rarely increased. So it tends to be very, very far behind community norms. - Professor Breen Creighton
Enterprise Bargaining can be a cause of inequity:
There's a great complexity of opinions emerging. My own opinion is that the degree of significance that has been given to collective bargaining is unfortunate. Unfortunate because it means that wage earners who are represented by strong unions have done significantly better than wage earners who are not so represented. And this has created inequities within the wage structure. There are people—and not a few people, quite a significant number—who rely on the minimum wages set by the Fair Work Commission, and these are falling further and further behind the people who benefit from the bargains negotiated by strong unions. I certainly wouldn't advocate the abolition of collective bargaining, it would be a senseless thing to be advocating, it's not going to happen. But I think that the degree of emphasis that's been given to it is unfortunate and I've said that in my submission. - Professor Keith Hancock
This is something I agree with. I continue to be taken aback by some of the conditions and clauses found in enterprise agreements, particularly when compared to award free employees. Uncapped redundancies, superannuation of 17%+, warning letters which expire after 6 months.... these are all items that you can find if you go looking. Certainly enterprise agreements can serve a useful purpose in modifying an award to suit a local business context. However, in many cases they can also cause union's to leverage their bargaining power to push unnecessary conditions and restrictions causing business to divert resources from their high performers and constricting their capacity to implement change.
The Fair Work Act 2009 significantly simplified the Australian industrial relations system:
By the late '80s, early '90s, the award system was an absolute mess. In the federal system, there were well over a thousand awards. And there were thousands of awards in the various state systems. And very often, with the best will in the world, it was hard for an employer to know whether they were bound by a particular award or not.The Howard government purported to put in place a mechanism to review the existing mess and try to rationalise the content and the coverage of awards. They failed. To their great credit the Rudd/Gillard government succeeded in that. And that mass of awards was reduced to 122 modern awards, and that was a major achievement. I don't think that the government or the Tribunal get as much credit for that as they deserve. That was a very significant achievement, and those 122 awards, plus the national employment standards, that's what's now the safety net.And you engage in enterprise bargaining, moving on from the safety net, and subject to the BOOT test, that is the test that says that for an agreement to be approved by what we now call the Fair Work Commission it has to be shown that workers covered by the agreement are better off overall than they would be under the otherwise applicable award. - Professor Breen Creighton
I was fortunate enough to enter the HR world around the birth of the Fair Work system and so I was able to avoid most of the complexity that existed prior. I experienced some of this complexity when I worked on a workplace advice line and advised employers who may have been bound by throwback redundancy provisions or Long Service Leave. The throwback redundancy provisions ended 31 December 2014 and now employers can look towards the 4 yearly review of the modern award system for future changes. This review is occurring now.
I look forward to the current award base being updated. While the 2010 awards were a great step in the right direction, they also had some issues, inconsistencies and in some cases confusing for employers to fully understand. It seems like these items are being rectified with the insertion of pre-calculated rates into the new awards.
As a side note, one item I found interesting when working with multiple awards is the way they each had their own subtle style in how they described what might be effectively the same clause. My take is this was the work of individual unions and industry groups which injected their writing style into the awards they were making submissions for.
You can find out more about the 4 yearly Modern Award Review at the Fair Work Commission here.
No comments:
Post a Comment