Page 3967 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 October 2005
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Already, one in four workers is casual, and it is predicted to increase to one in three in the next 10 years.
Under these reforms, only five of the current 20 award conditions will be protected. Let me remind those opposite, because I am not sure they have yet cottoned on, that these include: a minimum hourly rate of pay, which is currently $12.75; 10 days sick leave; four weeks annual leave; unpaid parental leave; and a maximum number of weekly working hours. This means award conditions such as penalty rates are not guaranteed by law.
As the WorkChoices example shows, these changes will be a disaster for casual workers. Like Billy, they will be forced to accept individual agreements just to get a job. These agreements will strip away their current entitlements to penalty rates and meal breaks. In the case of minimum wage earners, this could represent 40 per cent or more of the salary to which they are currently entitled by law being stripped away for no compensation under the new system.
Remember, Billy is offered a full-time job contingent on his accepting an AWA that explicitly removes other award conditions, such as public holidays, rest breaks, bonuses, annual leave loading, allowances, penalty rates and shift overtime loading. With the undermining of collective bargaining rights that these changes bring, casuals will be amongst the most disadvantaged workers in the community and they will be less and less able to rely on their unions to fight for their rights. I am very concerned about where this race to the bottom will leave the Canberra community. I would have thought that all in this place, including those opposite, would share my concern.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (4.20): We have heard, through this MPI, virtually repeated Ms Porter’s motion of yesterday. Sadly, it is the same tired whingeing about the dire consequences for the ACT of freeing up workplaces and giving employers and employees the freedom to make decisions that will make both of them better off. Ms Porter talks about a drive to the bottom. It is the same message, as I said yesterday, the day before—
Mr Stefaniak: And the day before that.
MR MULCAHY: And the day before that, Mr Stefaniak; I keep saying it. It is the same as the message they had in 1995: the world, as we knew it, was going to come to an end. It did come to an end, because suddenly we had a buoyant economy; we suddenly had massive growth in employment. And did we get a fall in wages like we had seen in the rather ordinary growth under Labor? No, we saw a massive growth, about 14 per cent, over the period of the Howard government. We continue to see that level of growth. I have no doubt that we will continue to see economic prosperity. So this trip to the bottom is one that I find intriguing, because these claims have been made before, and they do not have much substance.
The fact is that the nonsense that has wasted so much of the time of this Assembly this week has little to do with the Labor Party’s concern for young people, for women, for casual workers and so on. It is really about instructions from the party’s union masters to try to prevent the workplace reforms becoming effective. It is not hard to see why. Whilst employers and employees stand to gain, the only potential losers from the
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