By Alexandra Marriott & Chris James
The Deputy Prime Minister should not treat the plight of newsagents and their experience of the modern Retail Industry Award 2010 as a political football.
Deputy Prime Minister and federal Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard said: “The Australian people said very clearly what they thought of Work Choices at the last election.
“They said they didn’t like condition-stripping AWAs that meant workers could be ripped off without compensation, and if they complained the boss could sack them with no notice and no recourse.”
But Tony Abbott did not accept this, she said.
“Mr Abbott didn’t get the message. He’s been telling business lunches that if elected he’ll bring back these contracts, which cut wages and conditions and put real pressure on family budgets.”
Opposition workplace relations spokesman Eric Abetz said “one size does not fit all” in minimum hours, and he supported the capacity of employers and workers to have more flexibility.
What is at stake is much too serious to be treated with a barrage of rhetoric.
In fact, VECCI is making a substantive argument about the responsibility of Governemnt to ensure that, as the realities of implementation emerge, the new safety net introduced by the Fair Work reforms is in fact ‘fairer and simpler’.
More importantly, the Government should have regard to the modern award objectives; the most relevant to this conversation is the objective that states that modern awards must take into account “the need to promote flexible modern work practices and the efficient and productive performance of work”.
If the Government maintains that modern awards do indeed promote ‘flexible modern work practices’, we’re at risk of the descriptor ‘flexible’ becoming nothing more than what Don Watson would call a ‘weasel word’.
Flexibility must be meaningful to business – and for the modern awards to be truly modern, they need to make sense to an increasingly fluid workforce, and to reflect the real flexibility that increasingly typifies employment arrangements.
Many businesses do not operate a ‘normal’ working week of Monday-Friday; in some industries, Sundays are increasingly a ‘normal’ trading day; many employees, such as parents and students, want to work short shifts to accommodate a work/life balance; the composition of the workforce is changing as our population ages – these are all factors of the modern workplace that modern awards must fit to, rather than modern awards continuing to impose outmoded terms and conditions that reflect a different methodology and experience of work.
So, rather than the debate about industrial relations turning upon an axis of circular political and rhetorical argument, it’s time for Government to pull up its sleeves and engage with what’s really happening on the ground for business – and in doing so, acknowledge that the inflexibilities of modern awards will drive down productivity, and make it more and more difficult for small business to survive.
The Government must acknowledge that this is not just about an election year, nor about the dreaded ‘WorkChoices’ – which gets trotted out like Banquo’s ghost at every conceivable moment – but about enabling Australian businesses to recover from economic crisis, and ensure that the Fair Work reforms are as much about fair work conditions as they are about facilitating a fair playing field for business.
I agree completely.
I was paid $17.50 a week for a pre-dawn, 6 day a week paper run when I was 12.
$2.50 per 2 hour shift is more than reasonable. Anyone who wants a minimum shift, or more pay than that is plain greedy.