www.workinglife.org.auIssue 9, April 2014

AUSTRALIA would plummet from having the fourth highest to the eighth lowest minimum wage in the developed world in just a decade, according to a new analysis of a plan put forward to the Abbott Government.

The ACTU has also found that if the proposal by the National Commission of Audit was adopted, all gains to the minimum wage over the last 15 years would be wiped out.

Under the proposal, by 2023, the minimum wage would drop back to its real value back in 1998, meaning no real gain

for minimum wage workers over a quarter of a century.

Community anger quickly escalated after the Commission of Audit’s report was publicly released on 1 May, which included its radical recommendation to cut the minimum wage and abolish the role of the independent umpire in setting a national standard of pay.

A determination to defend the minimum wage against this new attack was a recurring theme of May Day events held around the nation just days later.

The recommendation to cut the

national minimum wage was a surprise inclusion in the Commission of Audit’s report to the government, which made 86 recommendations including cuts to payments like the age pension, a $15 fee for GP visits, and the sale of Australia Post

It has recommended that annual rises in the minimum wage should be constrained to one percentage point below the rate of inflation – a real wage cut each year – until the minimum wage fell to a benchmark rate of 44% of the value of average weekly earnings in 2023.

Continued on page 6

Audit report targets the minimum wage

by MARK PHILLIPS Pay would fall by up to $209 a week

Life on the minimum wage: you would never hear Lisa Erskine complain, but making ends meet on the minimum wage is a constant struggle for workers like her. Photo: Mark Phillips/ACTU FULL STORY: Page 7

“We live pretty simple lives, actually”

EXCUSE us if we are a little self-indulgent – but you don’t get to celebrate your first anniversary

every day.Twelve months ago, the Working Life

site went live to the public promising to provide an alternative to the one-sided version of the news spun by the corporate-owned media.

As we stated at the outset, Working Life exists for the large number of Australians who share the basic values that underpin the Australian union movement: fairness, equality and job security.

Our mission was to bring you human stories, breaking news, vigorous comment, and eye-opening opinion from the world of work.

We said we would be a space for the authentic voices of Australian workers to tell their stories.

We would provide a platform for the campaigns and issues of Australian workers and unions to reach the wider community, and encourage people to take action.

A year later, we can confidently say that Working Life is delivering original news and opinion that you won’t find elsewhere.

In doing so, Working Life draws on a proud labour movement tradition.

At the start of the twentieth century, newspapers and magazines owned and published by unions took their place on newsstands alongside those owned by the big end of town.

The online revolution gives us the means to do this again, and Working Life has revived the tradition by filling the gap for an opinion-driven website that looks at news and current affairs from the perspective of Australian workers.

As we look back on the past 12 months, it staggers even us that we have published

more than 750 articles on Working Life.There have been many highlights of

which we are proud, including:• In May last year, within half an hour of Wayne Swan standing up in Parliament, we had comprehensive coverage of his final Budget available on the site.• We covered the 2013 federal election from start to finish, and examined Tony Abbott’s policies in more depth than many mainstream outlets.• The day Nelson Mandela died, we published the inside story of his close ties to Australian unions in the fight against apartheid.• We exposed the alleged blacklisting behaviour of construction giant Grocon, and the exploitation of migrant workers under the 457 visa scheme.• We’ve brought to an Australian audience stories of workers’ struggles in Europe, Asia and North America

and around the world. And some of the articles we have published have been picked up by union media in other parts of the world.

We’ve told the stories of dozens upon dozens of Australian workers: their battles, their wins and their dreams, and we’ve posed the question: do you live to work, or work to live?

Hopefully, we’ve made you laugh along the way. And we’ve even managed to grab the attention of Andrew Bolt, who name-checked us in one of his regular diatribes against progressive Australians. So we must be doing something right!

We know from the regular feedback we get from our readers that there is a great appetite for honest, spin-free reporting about work in Australia.

But we’re not resting on our laurels. We hope this birthday will be the first of many.

GET IN TOUCHWant to know more or get involved? Contact our newsdesk by email at editor@workinglife.org.au or phone (03) 9664 7266. Or get in touch by Facebook (facebook.com/ThisWorkingLife) or Twitter (twitter/thisworkinglife).

Editor: Mark Phillips. Responsibility for election comment is taken by Dave Oliver, Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, 365 Queen Street, Melbourne 3000. .org.au

Editorial

2 .org.au April 2014

Let’s hope this birthday is the first of many to come

THE Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has used International Workers’ Memorial Day to launch a series of hard-hitting television advertisements highlighting the importance of speaking out about dangers at work before it is too late.

The ads, which are part of a new safety campaign, ‘Stand up, speak out, come home’, feature four real stories of workplace death and injury.

They were launched at a commemorative service at the National Workers Memorial in Canberra.

The campaign comes as the Abbott Government seeks to curtail unions’ ability to police health and safety on construction and building sites by expanding the powers of the building industry watchdog, currently known as the Fair Work Building and Construction.

The Abbott Government wants to effectively outlaw legitimate industrial action over health and safety issues, and FWBC is aggressively prosecuting unions for raising issues such as a series of potentially hazardous incidents on Lend Lease sites in Sydney.

According to the CFMEU, a worker is seriously injured or dies every six minutes in the construction, mining and forestry sectors, a rate that is 50% higher than for all other industries combined.

CFMEU National Secretary Michael O’Connor said last year, 91 workers died in the three industries, including 19 in construction, and 10 in mining.

Already this year, 23 workers have already died in these sectors, including two coal miners in the Hunter Valley earlier this month.

“One of the most dangerous jobs you can have is as a construction labourer,” Mr O’Connor said. “They are killed at four times the rate of workers in other jobs.Too often, many workers feel they can’t speak out, or stand up to their employer – with devastating consequences.

“That’s why unions are vital. We will always take a stand so that workers can

come home safely to what matters most.“But our ability to stand up for safety

is compromised by Federal Government witch-hunts on unions.”

ACTU President Ged Kearney, who also took part in the service in Canberra, said the international evidence was clear that trade unions save lives.

“Around the world, unionised workplaces experience fewer accidents and have better health and safety records. And it’s union campaigning that has

built today’s workplace health and safety systems.

“Despite the dangers in the construction sector, the Federal Government wants to re-establish the ABCC which greatly restricts when workers and unions can act to address workplace health and safety risks.”

3.org.au

New ad campaign reinforces unions’ role in work safety

Workers’ Memorial Day 2014

April 2014

by MARK PHILLIPS

Two mums who will never see their sons again

“My son put his safety in their hands. And now he’s gone,” says Ann Everett (pictured above) of her son, Mark McCallum. Mark, 34, was an experienced and competent crane driver working on the construction of a pier in Dalrymple Bay. Things had gone wrong all morning: four or five attempts to get the concrete slabs in place had failed. There was a lot of pressure on the workers to get the job done by the end of the shift. It was all about time. In the end Mark was crushed as he tried to clear debris from the tracks for the jinker. The company was found to be negligent.

“Josh thought the company would keep him safe. Now he’s never coming home,” says Joanne Ufer, the mother of 25-year-old Joshua. Joshua had worked in mining in Australia, and he knew the risks involved. He’d trav-elled to New Zealand to work in the Pike River mine to have the experi-ence of working and living in a different country. A youthful adventure. Investigations have since shown that there were a lot of safety issues the miners were not aware of. The aftermath of the explosion is not over. My son has never been returned home to us and no-one has been held to account for his death.

TAKE ACTIONJoin the campaign at:standupspeakoutcomehomeorg.au

THE death of my father has always been a very private matter for me. In my 17 years working for

unions I had never spoken to workmates or publicly on the circumstances of Dad’s death.

But I now feel the need to relay the experience of my family and I. I do this not seeking pity or some other gain but to reinforce why it is we do what we do.

My Dad died on Good Friday 1983. I had just turned 13.

Dad was a labourer who had gone on to be a grader driver and then to night school to get a ticket to be a foreman. At home was Mum, my younger sister and me. My older brother was the first of our family to go to university and was at uni in another city.

I remember Dad as a tall, handsome man. He had played Aussie Rules at the highest level and took his fitness seriously. Going into church each Sunday he would make a sign of the cross on his legs with holy water. He said it was a habit he had gotten into when playing footy and had never had any leg problems or injuries.

Six weeks before Dad died he had gone to work on a normal work day.

An event happened that day that meant he came home a different person. Three weeks later he was in hospital suffering heart attack after heart attack. Two weeks after that the doctors told my Mum that they could do no more for Dad and he needed to be airlifted to Melbourne. Mum told Dad he was to be moved. He told Mum not to let the little kids see him (me and my sister).

Dad’s feet were black and his legs blue. His circulation was shutting down. He could no longer walk.

Despite the work of outstanding doctors and nurses, in the early hours of Good Friday my Dad passed away, alone in a hospital bed, 300km from home.

It was ultimately found that Dad had died because a company had failed to carry out routine and essential maintenance on its infrastructure.

This was a time before compulsory superannuation and no-fault workers’ compensation as we know it today.

I don’t know how we got through it. I don’t know how Mum continued to put food on the table. The Salvos knocked on the door and offered help. Even as a 13-year-old, I knew my Dad would find it unbelievable that his family, the family he had protected and provided for, would in a matter of weeks after his passing have the Salvos at the door.

The company who caused Dad’s death admitted their guilt and knew they would have to provide some assistance to our family for our future. These matters were determined months later in Court.

After being in Court my mum was quite upset. She told me that the company’s lawyer had asked her what the expression was on my Dad’s face as he had his heart attacks. Mum kept asking me over and over “Why would he

ask such a thing?”It’s only recently that I worked out

the company had conceded it would need to make payments on behalf of my brother, sister and me, but if they could put some doubt in the Court’s mind as to the strength of the relationship between Mum and Dad maybe they could get away with reduced compensation for her.

My Dad didn’t deserve to die in the way he did. My Mum didn’t deserve to have her commitment to my Dad questioned. Years later my best mate’s Mum told me she had never felt so helpless than when she saw me after Dad’s funeral. She said she didn’t know what to say or what to do to help me.

And that’s why we do the jobs we do. Unions give a voice to the 13-year-olds who aren’t at the table negotiating laws with governments, who aren’t in workplaces pointing out OHS risks to bosses, and who aren’t always agitating for something better.

Jarrod Moran is Senior OHS & Workers Compensation Officer at the ACTU.

4 .org.au April 2014

No 13-year-old should have to go through what I did

Never forgotten: Jarrod Moran with a photo of his father, Gavan, holding him as a baby, alongside his older brother, Kieren.

by JARROD MORAN

Worker’s Memorial Day 2014

IN 1983, a young Australian nurse named Helen McCue, a committed member of the then-Australian Nursing Federation, was working with the World Health Organisation in the Middle East.

Returning to Australia later that year, she took a proposal inspired by her experience in the refugee camps to the then-ACTU President Cliff Dolan. Helen’s idea was for the establishment of an international solidarity organisation in Australia.

She had been inspired while working in the Palestinian refugee camps alongside nurses from Norwegian People’s Aid, the overseas aid arm of the Norwegian trade union movement. Impressed by their focus on skills training, Helen felt that the Australian union movement could also make a difference in the lives of workers and marginalised peoples around the world.

With the support of Cliff Dolan and the ACTU, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA was established in 1984.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA’s first projects worked in partnership with refugee communities in war-torn Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, and Lebanon, training local community members as ‘barefoot doctors’ able to provide the simple and basic healthcare which can save thousands of lives of infants and nursing mothers.

These early projects underlined Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA’s commitment to a decent life for all and international solidarity through education and training, working in partnership with those whose rights to decent work, education, health and justice are restricted or denied.

It is this commitment that saw Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA move quickly to support anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, and contribute to the rebuilding of Cambodia, which had been devastated by three decades of conflict, including the

killing of two million people by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA’s current program has grown to more than 60 projects in 16 countries including partnerships with Burmese refugees on the Thai-Burma border, agricultural skills training with Palestinian refugees, supporting the rural poor in Vietnam and Cambodia, vocational education in the Solomon Islands, union-building in Timor-Leste and Indonesia, women’s development throughout the world, and advocating for the protection of workers in South-East Asia from the scourge of asbestos.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is unique because we place workers’ rights at the centre of all our work. It is only when

working women and men have education and skills, and can organise collectively to ensure safe workplaces and fair wages, that they will have the dignity of being able to feed, clothe and shelter their family and educate their children. Decent work with a fair, living wage is crucial to lifting living standards around the world.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA also believes that the equality of women is essential for lasting change. The rights of women — particularly refugees, migrant workers and other marginalised groups — are a fundamental building-block of our work to improve women’s standard of living and increase their social and economic power.

For 30 years, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, on behalf of the Australian union movement, has played a crucial role in fighting for global social justice ─ for human rights, workers’ rights, self-determination, equality, freedom and democracy.

Over the course of 2014, Union AidContinued next page

5.org.auApril 2014

How a young Aussie nurse changed thousands of lives

APHEDA at 30

Above: Cambodian beer promotion workers take action in their fight for a living wage. Left: Helen McCue with two of the Palestinian nurses she worked with in the refugee camps.

by KATE LEEExecutive Officer ofUnion Aid Abroad-APHEDA

The national minimum wage of $16.37 an hour, or $622.20 a week, is currently 56.3% of average earnings.In today’s terms, a minimum wage set at 44% of the average wage would be only $486.20 for a 38-hour week – $136 lower than it is now.

But it would fall even further, according to the ACTU’s analysis, because the Commission of Audit is also recommending that the annual wage-setting powers be taken from the independent Fair Work Commission and instead be handed to state and territory governments to set their own benchmark at 44% of their own state’s average wage, if it is lower than the national average.

This would mean that in Tasmania, in today’s terms, the minimum wage would be cut by $209.48 a week, while in South Australia it would be cut by $191.44.

In its analysis, Paying the Price: The Commission of Audit’s plan to cut the wages of Australia’s lowest paid workers, the ACTU has described the recommendations as an “ambush for low-paid workers” and beyond the scope of the Commission’s terms of reference.

“The Commission’s recommendation to cut the real wages of Australia’s 1.54 million lowest paid workers would leave them substantially worse off,” the ACTU says.

“Within only two to three years, Australia’s minimum wage would be lower than Britain’s and Canada’s, as a proportion of the average wage . . . This is a prescription for the Americanisation of our labour market.”

The ACTU is equally scathing of the proposal to give control over the minimum wage to the government of the day.

The concept of a national minimum wage was established in Australia by the Harvester Judgement in 1907, and ever since then the responsibility for setting the minimum wage has been with the Fair Work Commission and its predecessors.

They conduct an annual review where unions and employers are both able to put their case for or against a wage rise. This year’s review is underway, with unions pushing for a $27 a week rise in the minimum wage to $649.20.

“The Commission of Audit wants to turn minimum wages into a political football,” the ACTU report says.

“In countries like the United States where the minimum wage is set by politicians, the typical experience is that the minimum wage stagnates for years, punctuated by large, irregular increases.

“This is bad for workers, who see their real wages fall for year after year, and it’s bad for employers, who have to adjust to large one-off increases in wages.”

ACTU President Ged Kearney said the Commission of Audit’s proposal represented “the biggest attack on Australian wages since the Great Depression and would entrench a US-style working poor”.

At Work

6 .org.au April 2014

Read more:workinglife.org.au

Continued from previous page

Abroad-APHEDA will be celebrating its life-changing work, as well as looking at the stories of solidarity that make up its history and future.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has helped train more than 80,000 Cambodians since 1985, mainly women, in vocational skills, as well as union-building and worker health projects in the informal economy and the garment industry – a sector in which workers have recently been killed for their

demands for a living wage.Since 1998, thousands of East

Timorese people have had vocational training. Most importantly, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA – with the support of Australian unions – helped establish and build the union movement in Timor-Leste’s fledgling democracy.

In countries like Vietnam and Laos, health and HIV training, vocational skills and the strengthening of workers’ rights at the enterprise level have been a feature of Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA’s work, as well as projects

assisting trafficked women and providing livelihood skills training for young disabled victims of Agent Orange.

After three decades of standing with workers around the world striving for justice and safe and decent work, Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is continuing to deliver on the vision that first came to a young Helen McCue in the refugee camps of the Middle East.

TAKE ACTIONMake a donation:apheda.org.au

Weekly cut to minimum wage if recommendations implemented in your state.Source: ACTU

How the cut to the minimum wage would hit your stateAudit report targets theminimum wageContinued from page 1

LIFE has never been easy for Lisa Erskine, but it just got a lot harder earlier this month.

After her husband Grant suffered a traumatic workplace accident on 3 March, Lisa (pictured) has found herself the couple’s sole breadwinner.

The finances have always been tight for this frugal couple from Dereel, in central Victoria, but with Grant’s return to work some time off – if ever – they are now relying on Lisa’s base rate of $542.70 to get by.

Not that you would ever hear Lisa complaining.

The last thing she wants is to be viewed as a victim, and she doesn’t consider herself to be ‘working poor’, but it is for 1.5 million low-paid workers like herself that the ACTU goes into bat each year in the annual wage review conducted by the Fair Work Commission.

The bandage over Grant’s right arm is a visible daily reminder of the accident that has put him off work.

He was lucky to emerge mostly unscathed after rolling his truck not far from home, which was hauling about 30 tonnes of logs from a sawmill in Colac.

While the wound to his arm will eventually heal, the psychological trauma he suffered makes his return to work a

long way off.That has put added pressure on the

couple’s finances and extra responsibility on the shoulders of Lisa, who has a permanent part-time job on a spinning machine at the Creswick Woollen Mills, an hour from home.

“Grant and I just recently became empty nesters,” explains Lisa, 48.

“The boys have both grown up and left home, and at this stage of life, we’re finding it quite difficult.

“Working permanent part-time isn’t a very big wage, but it’s a wage we’re going to have to manage on until such time as Grant is well enough and able to go back to work.

“Grant and I don’t own the house – we are buying the house [and] we have a mortgage like every other family.

And just recently with the boys leaving home we decided to redecorate the house and did some work, but now with my husband’s accident, everything’s put on hold.

“Grant and I are people who if we can’t afford something, we don’t do it.

“Neither of us own new cars or anything like that. We drive old cars because we don’t have the finances to buy outside of our means. We don’t go away for holidays or things like that.

“So we live pretty simple lives, actually.”

7.org.auApril 2014

At Work

‘We live pretty simple lives, actually’

SHE’S worried about losing her insecure job and she describes her employer as ‘tough’ so I won’t use her real name.

‘Anne’ is a 67-year-old aged care assistant who still works as many shifts as she can get. After a lifetime on the job, you would think she would at least be able to live in modest comfort.

But she can’t.Her neighbours say they can tell

when Anne has visitors because that’s the only time her house is lit up. Electricity is expensive so she sleeps with the blinds raised.

That way if she needs to get up in the middle of the night she can see where she’s going without flicking the switch.

Instead of buying vegetables she grows her own; it’s cheaper.

But then there was low rainfall last year and tap water is expensive so much of the garden died. Saving money dominates all her decisions and keeps her awake at night.

People like at Anne and their struggles are at the heart of the annual wage review case in the Fair Work Commission.

Australia’s lowest paid include cleaners, retail and hospitality staff, child care workers, farm labourers, and factory workers.

They aren’t victims and they’re not asking for any sort of charity. What they want and deserve is that their living standards keep up with the rest of the community. Sadly, we know that they’re falling behind.

Australian minimum wage earners are doing okay by global standards but only just.

As we hear high-earning employers and the Government arguing that workers need to ‘tighten their belts’, it would be good to remember they’re talking about people like Anne.

We must notforget who the minimum wage is for

by DAVE OLIVERSecretary of the ACTU

by MARK PHILLIPS

Photo: Mark Phillips/ACTU

8 .org.au April 2014

My Working Life

Photo: Mark Phillips/ACTU

Helping others is Penny’s passion in life

I’VE been in my current job for a really long time now, since ’98, 15 years or so. I’ve always been

interested in less traditional social work, more focused around social policy and social change, I suppose. The job I’ve got now was an attractive job because it combines the social policy work with direct service delivery.

We were 10 quid Poms, and I was the only one in my family to go beyond grade 10, so I was very fortunate to get a university education. And I suppose, my family was pretty working class, we came from England and they didn’t recognise the qualifications of my father. He did it tough trying to provide for his family and I always thought it was really unfair how hard he worked and didn’t seem to ever really get ahead.

And I guess that was kind of a motivation too – if he can work all these hours and all this time and still have trouble making ends meet, it doesn’t seem like a very fair situation. So that was the kind of motivation for my work, and I suppose to some extent the motivation for my joining the union which I did as soon as I got my first job.

I really love working in the community sector. It’s great working alongside people to try to achieve what you think is a greater fairness and trying to understand the issues that impact on people’s lives that seem to be unfair and working out how you might strategise around that.

The Tenants’ Union was effectively a

peak body for 22 other services around the state. We delivered services directly to tenants but also provided resources and training to smaller organisations around the state.

But now we’ve been reduced to one small office doing direct service delivery for tenants based in Brisbane, so back to our roots really. Our capacity has been reduced since the funding withdrawal but we’re now trying to ramp it up by using volunteers and getting some legal firms on board to assist us and things like that. So hopefully it will only get better from here, not worse.

To get an idea of our annual case load, over the last several years it’s been something like 7500 pieces of advice. An advice would be someone calling and on average would take us 20 to 25 minutes, sometimes much longer.

We worked out somewhere around one-in-six clients are at risk of homelessness. The vast majority of our clients are in private rental, not social housing, and at the very pointy end, we’re working with people to try to keep them in housing, how to save

their tenancy. There might be all sorts of reasons why they’re looking at losing their tenancy. They might be in rent arrears, or the owner might just be taking some retaliatory action because they’ve asked for repairs. There are a lot of affordability issues for households living in the private rental market.

There’s a whole range of other things we deal with as well. We try to help people get their properties better repaired, make them safer. Or getting their bond back.

Often you’re working with people who are low-income people, the people who don’t get much of a say normally, and trying to empower them to take action themselves, or when they can’t, to take action for them to assert their rights.

I’m not really from a union family. But if you work from a rights-based framework, it doesn’t make sense to me not to think about your own situation and want to make sure it’s fair.

The pay equity case was a proud moment for our sector and our union. It was a real acknowledgement of the important work of the sector. While there are very committed people in the sector who have worked in it for a long time pre- and post-pay equity, this really values their work. There were some people who found it difficult to stay in the sector even if they wanted to with children and the costs of a mortgage, and this is a really good acknowledgement of their role, particularly as the workforce is predominantly women.

Penny Carr is co-ordinator of the Tenants’ Union of Queensland, and was named Delegate of the Year at the ACTU National Union Awards in Melbourne last month. She has been a member of The Services Union since 1993.

9.org.auApril 2014

SUSPECT employers who poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Liberal Party coffers won’t

be called to account by Tony Abbott’s corruption royal commission.

The Prime Minister’s terms of reference, released in February, make it clear that Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon will not be asked to examine businesses that have left workers and small businesses high and dry after tipping six-figure sums into Liberal Party accounts.

This will be a relief to operators of Queensland-based Walton Construction who paid $430,000, as “rent”, to an LNP-linked trust before leaving sub-contractors millions of dollars out of pocket when it collapsed, last year.

And to those behind Steve Nolan Constructions which, Australian Electoral Commission records show, tipped at least $200,000 into NSW and federal LNP accounts in the two years before it went belly-up, owing workers and contractors more than $30 million.

Other employers Abbott appears to have deliberately written out of his Royal Commission script include Leighton Holdings, mired in allegations of bribery and corruption on a grand scale.

And Australian Water Holdings (AWH) the outfit accused of fleecing a publicly-owned utility while delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars into Liberal Party accounts. AWH was also the company that paid Cabinet Minister and Liberal fundraiser Arthur Sinodinis a cool $200,000 for less than 50 hours’ work.

In an interview with ABC Radio, Abbott insisted the royal commission, that opened in Sydney on , would

be a fair dinkum investigation of organisational corruption and that unions would not be unfairly targeted.

“This isn’t declaring war on anyone, it’s declaring war on wrongdoing,” the Prime Minister said.

“It’s declaring that there are certain standards in our society and whether you’re a company official or a union official, you’ve got to obey the law.” Speaking the same day, Attorney General George Brandis said any suggestion of corruption in the business community

would be investigated by the royal commission.

THESE claims are hard to square with the fact that the government has named the inquiry the Royal Commission into Trade Union Corruption and Governance, and written terms of reference that order the investigation of five specific entities – The Australian Workers’ Union, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union,

Continued next page

Abbott’s royal commission lets dodgy bosses off the hook

Politics

Tony Abbott’s new Royal Commission into unions is following a script that will be very familiar to anyone who paid attention to the Cole Royal Commission a dozen years ago,writes JIM MARR, author of First The Verdict.

Failed to find criminality: Terence Cole, who chaired the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry a decade ago. Photo Rob Homer/Fairfax Syndication

Continued from previous page

the Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union, the Transport Workers’ Union and the Health Services Union.

There is simply no mention of businesses alleged to have gouged taxpayers or ripped off workers while topping up Liberal Party funds.

That Abbott’s royal commission will not shine light into those dark corners is unsurprising because the Prime Minister has form. His Cole Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry was a cynical political exercise.

Royal commissions, by their nature, can be dodgy beasts.They carry all the trappings of the law but are not of the legal system. Spawned by the executive, their lasting attraction to politicians is that they get to write terms of reference that will determine the outcomes.

Australian royal commissions, in particular, are controversial because they have the power to trample basic legal protections and procedures. Hearsay, rumour and third party opinions are allowed and, often, relied on to shred reputations.

Counsel Assisting, who lead all the evidence, are not bound by courtroom rules designed to ensure fair and balanced presentation.

THE Cole Royal Commission took all these opportunities, and a few more, to deliver Abbott the political fix he wanted.

In 2002, the then-Workplace Relations Minister had a political problem. Construction unions were leading resistance to his government’s centrepiece Workplace Relations Act, largely through a successful pattern bargaining campaign.

Abbott was a vehement opponent of pattern bargaining which is based on the concept that people doing the same work, in the same industry, should get, basically, the same wages.

His difficulty was that pattern bargaining was legal.

Abbott jumped on allegations of bribery and corruption to order a report from his Employment Advocate, Jonathan Hamberger, who delivered 11 pages, light on fact and heavy on rumour.

But that was never going to deter Abbott from launching the most expensive royal commission in Australian history.

He assured voters his Cole Royal Commission would be an even-handed investigation of bribery, corruption and standover tactics across a blighted industry.

His commission employed 135 full-time staff. They served sweeping discovery orders, bugged phones and

forced banks to hand over client records.By the time the Sydney hearings

opened on 3 June 2002, investigators had gathered 110 witness statements from across NSW. A handful offered general overviews. All the rest alleged illegal or inappropriate dealings by trade unionists.

Commission investigators and highly-paid Counsel Assisting did not tender a single witness statement alleging wrongdoing by any employer in NSW, except where they claimed a business had been too co-operative with a union.

Based on this, Cole made 392 findings of unlawful conduct, more than 360 of them against union members. The first three set the tone.

Unlawful findings one and two, held that CFMEU organisers had failed to notify the occupier of a premise of their presence “as soon as was reasonably practicable”.

Cole’s third unlawful finding was that a CFMEU official had stopped work on a building site and held discussions “during work hours outside of meal-time,

or other break times”.

THESE findings had absolutely nothing to do with the allegations of hard-core criminality Abbott had used as the pretext for his royal commission.

Nor did they reflect untested “evidence” that had seen newspapers and

electronic media full of unsubstantiated anti-union allegations, largely from self-confessed rorters, for 10 solid months.

All Abbot’s men, the coercive powers and $60 million taxpayer dollars he had given them, couldn’t uncover enough evidence to sustain a single criminal charge against any trade unionist.

Instead, Cole called for “structural reform” recommending, as his first priority, that “pattern bargaining in this industry should be prohibited by statute”.

He went on to make 212 recommendations designed to strip workers of a say in their industry.

Fast forward to 2014 and the same Tony Abbott is a Prime Minister with a political problem. He has promised voters WorkChoices is “dead, buried and cremated” but key colleagues, and backers with deep pockets, want significant elements of the policy resurrected.

Instead of making a call, Abbott has flicked the technical fix off to a Productivity Commission his government has already started to stack with former political staffers.

As to a political fix? Well, a long-running inquiry that might weaken trade unions and dirty-up political opponents would just about be the dog’s bollocks.

.org.au April 201410

“The Cole Royal Commission into the Building and

Construction Industry was a cynical political exercise.

AMY asks: I am a qualified florist, adult, in Victoria. My hours are not set and vary each week. I have been working with my employer for 2.5 years now and have still never signed a contract. When I was hired I was told I would be casual, and as I only had a qualification not experience in the industry, I couldn’t be paid as much as the other staff. So I was put on $17.10 an hour.

A couple of weeks ago I got an 80c pay rise as the boss’s tax agent told her I was due a rise. I’ve looked online and even if I was part time, my pay should still be more. And if I am part-time I should have a minimum of 15 hours a week. Is this correct? Should I also get holiday and sick pay?

My question is: I am wanting to leave the job, but am I entitled to have back pay for the 2.5 years’ worth of holiday pay and sick pay? Or back pay for the underpaid hourly rate?

No wonder you’re confused as there seems to be no logic to how your boss is working out your wage rate

You seem to be treated as a casual with your hours varying each week and yet not getting the casual loading of 25% which the General Retail Industry Award says you should be getting.

Because you don’t get this loading it would therefore be reasonable to assume you’re permanent and entitled to sick leave and holiday pay – yet you’re not receiving that either. No wonder your employer’s accountant told your boss they were pushing their luck and needed to give you a pay rise!

So how much should you be paid? Given the irregularity of your hours, the fact you don’t get annual leave or holiday pay and were told not to come in for a month, let’s go with you being casual.

As you’re a qualified florist and have completed an apprenticeship the Modern Award says as an adult you should receive 100% of the Retail Employee level 4 band which is $19.05 cents per hour (or $724 per week for a 38 hour week). You will add to this a 25% casual loading which brings

up your basic hourly rate to: $23.81. If you work on weekends or public holidays, penalty rates will also be factored in.

Let’s now look at the other side of the coin and work out what you should get if you are permanent part time. You will get the basic rate of $19.05 cents an hour plus pro-rata sick leave and annual leave. Again if you work on weekends or public holidays you should get the appropriate penalty rates and, unlike causals, if you work in the evening during the week you should be paid an additional 25% for any of the hours you work after 6pm.

The Award also has some interesting things to say about regularity of hours for permanent part time workers. See in particular, clauses 12.1, 12.2 and 12.8.

Whichever way we look at it, your employer is doing the wrong thing. The Award provides the safety net which sets out your minimum entitlements – your boss can’t make it up as they go along.

So what can you do about it? You can make a claim through the Fair Work Ombudsman for the money you’ve been underpaid. And yes, you can chase back payment. You are also protected by law from any adverse action (e.g. or having your shifts cut) on the part of your boss because they’re angry you’ve contacted the Ombudsman.

Another good thing to remember is you have six years to make a claim, so if you wanted to lie low until you’ve found another job and then lodge a complaint, you can do so.

Just a word of warning though – you don’t want to leave it too long as shops come and go – you don’t want to find yourself chasing money you’re owed along with a queue of other people chasing unpaid bills from this business.

Ask Us

How much back pay am I entitled to?

11.org.auApril 2014

by RIGHTS WATCH

GET HELP AT WORK

Phone Australian Unions on 1300 4 UNION (1300 486 466)

Can our employer change our pay without our consent?LYNETTE asks: We are having problems getting paid, some of us are really struggling to get our pay on time, and all of a sudden there is a change to our pay without letting us know. I have a baby girl and am a single parent. I was paid per hour and per delivery and now I only got paid per delivery.

It’s your right to be paid correctly and on time each pay day. It doesn’t matter if the money is paid into your bank account or whether you receive actual money, but the important thing is you should be paid on time with a detailed pay slip which should include the following information:THE employer’s ABN (if applicable);THE employer’s name;THE employee’s name;THE date of payment;THE pay period;THE the gross pay and nett pay (that is the money you’ve been paid before and after tax;THE loadings, allowances, bonuses, incentive-based payments, penalty rates or other paid entitlements;IF you are paid by the hour it should list the ordinary hourly rate, the number of hours worked at that rate, the amount of pay at that rate;IF the employee is paid an annual rate (salary), the rate as at the last day in the pay period;ANY deductions from your pay, including the amount of the deduction, the name, or name and number of the fund/ account the deduction was paid into (for example, you might have union fees deducted);ANY superannuation contributions paid, including the amount paid during the pay period (or the amount of contributions that need to be made), the name and number of the superannuation fund.

Your employer cannot suddenly change the conditions of your employment without your consent, whether that be from permanent to casual (or vice-versa) or, in your case, effectively slash your rate of pay, which is exactly what’s happened as you’ve lost the security of receiving an hourly rate and are now just paid by delivery.