Award rationalisation: Howard’s hidden Work Choices agenda
NSW Minister for Industrial Relations, John Della Bosca said today’s statement by John Howard about rationalising industrial awards will provide little comfort for workers trapped under Work Choices.
“If Mr Howard is re-elected he will push ahead with this plan which will allow him to achieve his true agenda – the stripping away of further basic work conditions,” the Minister said.
“The Iemma Government has made submissions to the Award Review Taskforce (ART) stating that the proposed rationalisation of the current award arrangements will not achieve a simpler system.
“The federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, has been sitting on the ART Report since July 2006 and has done nothing about award rationalisation.
“This is because he knows the process of award rationalisation will be incredibly expensive, complex, and further disadvantage working families – this is a decision he cannot afford to make public with a looming election.
“In giving instructions to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission to rationalise awards, Mr Hockey will be the sole arbiter with no requirement to consult publicly.
“If Work Choices is anything to go by, we know that there will be big losers - and plenty of them - in the Commonwealth’s drive to see workers’ wages and entitlements cut.
“The Howard government just can’t be trusted when it says no workers will be worse off because the real and overwhelming evidence is just the opposite.
“Work Choices is achieving precisely what it was designed to do - cut the wages and entitlements of hard-working families – this was no accident.
“Mr Howard and his former Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, are on the record as claiming they believed the average wage was too high and should be reduced by $70 a week.
“According to the recently released Australia@Work Report, they have exceeded this goal as it reveals Work Choices has reduced wages by up to $106 a week.
“It has always been the Howard Government’s agenda to remove pay scales, union dispute resolution procedures and non allowable matters such as redundancy provisions and jury service.
“Now Mr Howard is proposing to strip them back even further as he continues to pretend that he cares for the well-being of working Australian families,” Mr Della Bosca said.
“Further, workers under State awards who have been dragged into Work Choices will lose their current protections when their awards expire in March 2009,” Mr Della Bosca said.
“These workers can be forced onto individual contracts with only limited protections. And if you think the so-called fairness test will save them – think again.
“The fairness test will only compare the agreement against a designated federal award, which in the meantime has been ‘rationalised’. Your guess is as good as mine about what level of federal award protections will, in fact, remain.
“Already the test doesn’t apply to guarantee important conditions such as redundancy pay or paid maternity leave.
“Unlike Work Choices, Labor’s Forward with Fairness policy will modernise awards and simplify them but they will still contain fair protections for workers.
“Australian families deserve a fair and balanced industrial relations system that meets the needs of families, workers and businesses – the only way to achieve this is to throw the Howard Government out of office on 24 November,” he added.
NSW Minister for Industrial Relations
1 November 2007
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PROTECTING AUSSIE JOBS 
