Collective workplace action has achieved many important social and industrial benefits – from the eight hour day, and penalty rates to paid parental leave, and superannuation.
Through collective bargaining workers in dangerous industries such as construction have achieved better safety standards, teachers have won lower class sizes for their students, nurses have lifted the standard of patient care through nurse-patient ratios.
Under the Howard Government’s WorkChoices IR laws – some of which remain intact until new laws are passed by the Parliament – Australian workers have no enforceable right to collective bargaining.
Even where a majority of workers in a workplace want a collective agreement their employer has the power to refuse and insist on non-union job contracts. These are not ‘agreements’ at all, but are non-negotiable take-it-or-leave-it company pay offers.
- Telstra management are currently refusing to negotiate with the unions (CEPU, CPSU & APESMA) that represent more then 10,000 workers at the telephone company.
- Rio Tinto, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, is refusing to negotiate with the union (CFMEU) representing its worker at the Pilbara Iron Company.
- Cochlear, the bionic ear manufacturer and exporter is refusing to negotiate an agreement with the union (AMWU) despite workers voting twice to reject the company’s non-union offer.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that workers get higher annual average wage increases under union collective agreements than under AWA individual agreements. Between June 2004 and June 2005 wages increased by 4.3 percent under union collective agreements compared to only 2.5 percent under AWAs.
The Rudd Labor Government has pledged to restore the right of Australian workers to collective bargaining with new laws expected to be brought into Parliament anytime from September 2008.
It is important that in its new IR laws the Government establishes a comprehensive and workable system of collective bargaining, provides a strong role for the independent umpire to settle disputes that are hard to resolve, and gives workers a range of important legal rights and protections in their workplaces.
