Thanks for posting - I really don't think any of the policy makers (or enforcers!) are aware of what these changes will actually mean.

One thing however - I read earlier that unfairly dismissed employees WILL have a way to fight for their job back - in court, at the expense of the sacked employee.
Nitpickers will say this is a right to recourse when we know in reality it's not, seeing as the extremely high cost of going to court and representation is unlikely to be embarked upon by someone who has just lost their job.

I think we DO need IR reform, I feel sorry for those small businesses who are left crippled by paperwork and too timid to employ new people because they are so damn hard to get rid of if they don't work out...but these changes are not going to help them, the laws are going to enable large businesses (ones who are already doing everything in their power to screw the worker) to (more easily) put profits first and people second.

Come on - let's do a reality check here. How many big companies would be able to break themselves up into units of less than 100 employees and continue to function efficiently.

Not only is it totally unfeasible but even the suggestion would imply a complete lack of understanding of the way business works - probably dulled by too long an exposure to the ALP (please see

The Australian Labor Party: incestuous, secretive, sclerotic
Domestic Politics - Peter McMahon - 13/7/2005 issue of Online Opinion)

Ken McKay provides concise examples of how the abolishment of unfair dismissal laws will provide employers with unrestrained powers to bully workers and implement systems of punitive “three strikes and your out” work cultures. As a unionist all my life I deplore and fear this kind of culture infesting Australian work places. It’s a pity that more builders and tradies and factory workers don’t log onto this site and give account.

Trust and work place comradary between peers AND between bosses and workers will be replaced with suspicion, pimping, and discriminatory practices that will not have any third party arbitration and conciliation. As Mckay has already testified these working conditions already exist, but will soon prosper and mushroom once Howard introduces his bastardized reforms in September – which by far the most sinister wedge politick card Howard has played. This is no doubt his last trump card before retirement, it is his ideological dream, his selfish desire to take on the unions one last time – but it will be Australian workers who will suffer.

If union membership over the last decade has dwindled it is not because unions have become irrelevant to working Australians but because workers have enjoyed working conditions that unions and workers have created over a longer period of time. This unconscious privilege of non-union members is well known to union organizers and advocates such as Mckay. But this knowledge must now be used carefully.

Workers who feel the wrath of Howard’s IR reforms, or simply those workers who do not support this radical change to work cultures will want their votes to count in the next federal election. Unions can ensure this by staking a claim outside the Labor party for all workers. To simply ask workers to tie a yellow ribbon around Labor’s oak tree at the next election will not suffice. This is a bigger issue than getting Labor back into government.

How many businesses could effectively divide into companies employing less than 100 employees? I'd write the answer, but I think I'd get RSI from typing so many digits! Businesses are VERY effective with book-keeping. If you believe that businesses will be ethical and not try to bend the rules, you're very faithful and trusting, and could be exploited even more than workers will be by these proposals, which is quite a feat. Just as the first example of executive skullduggery I can think of, I bet if I promised to give $5 to everyone who reads this who pays less tax than Kerry Packer, I wouldn't have to open up my wallet.

Tim Carter.

Creative sacking. Thirty years ago we were working seven day weeks, 10 hours a day. We also had about a twenty-mile drive to work. After work I would help Mum and Dad with farm work. I was a dutiful worker. But horror of horrors - I had long hair. Lovely long hair. Thus i was a communist, a homosexual (not that that is a problem really), a this - a that - and the other. Sunday afternoon the boss says: "Don't bother showing up for work tommorrow with that hair." I says: "Whose gonna cut me hair tonight." He says: "That's not my problem."
Next day I show without hair cut and I am sent to the office. I explain that I have a hair net and the health inspectors are content. They check - the health inspectors back me up. I retain my job. After about an hour, i am removed from the line where I was doing light, fast, repetitive work and sent down to do a job that involved very heavy lifting. As a skinny little seventeen year old, i couldn't handle that job and when I told the boss so, he said that I had quit and marched me to the office to collect my pay. Seventeen, inarticulate, a weak company union, a 2IC with very aggressive manner - I was out the gate before I knew what hit me. John Howard and the Liberals must condone that kind of unfair treatment.

continued Is it just me or is there something really worrying about a Prime Minister who is so caught up in his ideology to the point that he actually argues for unfairness? Sheltered life in affluent suburbs;limited life experiences; no imagination to instill empathy; never had the split lip; couldn't sink a post hole if his life depended on it; taxpayers money at his disposal to fund PR to back up arguments that will hurt those very taxpayers; spin maths, 40,000 folk out of 86,000 in a conservative electorate with a slack oppositon equals a John Howard mandate (Orwell said they would tell you 2+2 = 5); a morbid fixation on getting rid of unions; a clear-down-the-noise attitude to labour voters; a complete faith in the universal holiness of employers whilst the kid serving down at the fast food is out to rob his multi-national franchise boss blind and thus bring the nation to its knees; and spin, spin, spin ,spin; and a huge case of downward neural flush; and more spin - billions of our dollars worth of spin (As the saying goes: "If you need PR; it is because you need PR.") I think it would be grossly fair to sack all Liberals - the saving in spin money would be big as a cane-farmers verandah; but of course the actual unemployment level would rise which would give the numbers men and women a chance to exercise their creative side so that the unemployment level remained the same

Well said rancitas... That's just it - the whole thing is not an economic argument - it's a horrible, elite-ist argument in which those ALREADY doing well smugly say 'I'm going to do well out of this, what's your problem?'

There are shades of a 'trading places' philosophy that those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale are there because of choice not circumstance while simultaneously making no appology for their OWN progeny's way to be greased with money, influence and the 'old boys' club. But it's all effort - right? Under this new system people would get what they deserved according to effort...? if that were true, get ready to see a lot of YSL clad bums on the street...

Get real. We are humans, we wage a constant battle to balance nurturing and kindness against our selfish, greedy nature. I don't think the people responsible for the profit margins of a business are any different...and we all know that self preservation (selfishness, greed) wins.

Power corrupts and Absolute Power corrupts ABSOLUTELY. Give these bastards the chance and there will be a slave class in our lifetimes.

Seventeen of Australia’s leading academic researchers in the fields of industrial relations and labour market issues, employed in universities across Australia, have released a series of papers analysing the details of the Howard Government’s proposed changes to Australia’s industrial relations laws and the likely effects of these changes.

The Federal Government’s Industrial Relations Policy: Report Card on the Proposed Changes

Follow this link and download the paper: http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/content.php?pageid=14896

Rats rancitas; your case of unfair dismissal for wearing long hair is a poor one, let me explain. Basically the employer owes us nothing except respect for what we do in his or her service and our private lifestyle choices should not interfere with that.

My experience as an add hoc shop floor rep in many places was most bring the sack on themselves by their attitude and flaunting your differences with the boss was the best way to do it. Why be out of step when you need the money?

During the depression and trying not to embarrass their mum at the dinner table many boys left home and went fossicking for what few jobs there were along the roads and back blocks. One uncle slept under barbed wire fences for protection in Tasmania but he eventually got over to Melbourne, another from my mother’s side boiled grass in the tea billy with his brother on their way between Sydney and Dubbo. They were my mentors.

Back in Melbourne there was a queue from midnight to daylight where fellows could read the same paper. Outside the Commonwealth Pottery one frosty morning was a job for my lucky uncle after months of waiting. Someone from the factory died overnight and failed to turn up next day. Uncle humped clay for many years.

Employers did not forget either and raking up cases that are even half dubious play right into our government’s hands. Besides; my late auntie was there at Fisherman’s Bend when a girl was scalped by a drill which she was using to make our wartime airframes. A wisp of hair is all it takes.

Bruce,
You ask how many companies would split themselves up and suggest that they won't, obviously you have had no experience in the retail industry. In Queensland there is regulation that governs trading hours. Essentially companies that employ more than a certain number of employees are classified by legislation as non-exempt shops. Prior to recent reforms trading on Sundays for non-exempt shops was prohibited.

Companies regularly used corporate restructing to ensure their staff numbers were below the threshold and thus were able to trade on a Sunday.

Without pointing the finger at particular companies why is that there exist XYZ Electrical, XYZ Computers, XYZ Furniture stores all with separate company structures and cash registers yet are often located next to each other. For the customers ease of operation wouldn't there be no dividing walls and separate registers, golly gee there must be some other reason for these artificial divides.

I'm sure Bruce still believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and that corporate Australia is made up of men and women of virtue who would not contemplate using an "artificial" corporate structure to benefit their operations.

Taz you totally miss the point in your effort to deny that there is any problem with employer behaviour. Your argument reminds me of the Monty Python skit that goes ‘you think you had it bad, why we had to live in a paper bag and ……’.

You write that the employer owes us nothing except respect for what we do. Exactly, and so an employer has no right to be biased against us for being or wearing something they do not like. Rancitas, wore a hair net so your spurious little vignette about one wisp of hair is irrelevant.

Rancitas was doing the job, so the employer had no right to change his conditions due to a personal dislike.

Your attitude seems to be that as a worker, one needs to tug the forelock and pay due deference to the bossman. I think they call this an 'Uncle Tom' attitude and I thought that as a society we had gone beyond that.

However, as many of the previous posters have noted, a clear class difference between the employers (and the successful enterprise workers) and the rest of us, is just what the neo-liberals seem to be bringing about.

On the upside, I guess all those old novels from the Victorian era will again be relevant and meaningful to us

From the lips of the devious Kevin Andrews himself

Then There Were Three

Australian workers will be left with just three core entitlements – the minimum wage, unpaid parental leave and sick leave – if Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews gets his way.
The traditional five-day working week, penalty and overtime rates will all be up for grabs under the federal government’s new regime, Andrews admitted, last week.
Andrews nearly came clean on minimum standards that Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) will be benchmarked against in an interview with Ben Packham of Melbourne's Sun Herald,
He confirmed his intention to get rid of the "no disadvantaged test" for judging the validity of his secret, individual contracts. He said it would be replaced by five legislated minimum conditions.
These will be a 38-hour working week, sick leave, parental leave, the minimum wage and four weeks' annual leave.
But then Andrews revealed two of those legislated minimums would not be minimums at all.
He told the Sun Herald that weekend rates, overtime and penalty rates could be bargained away, rendering the 38-hour week entirely meaningless.
Andrews said work could be performed over up to seven days a week and penalty or weekend payments "would depend on the arrangement between the employer and the employee".
He went on to say workers would be able to "trade away" two weeks of their annual leave, effectively leaving the minimum at the US standard of two weeks.

http://workers.labor.net.au/271/news1_three.html

Companies have already the structures to accomodate the dismissal of a person.

Their company guidelines and procedures that are the training tools for the employee lays out perfect scenarios in business.

Unfortunately no business is perfect and therefore the company review system expels their unwanted.

What was interesting was Peter Costello arrogance with regards to the statistic analysis done on business with regards to the IR being approved and how this would impact their business on employing more people?

80% of business said it would make no different but a certain 17% said they would. Under a fair and just government majority would rule. But not our Peter Costello. His attitude was that it would mean that 17% of business would and that would be more jobs better than nothing in outcome of the changes.

Huh!

Mollydukes: Why should we, or any would be workers in Australia be treated any different to say the factory fodder in China a place we seem to so love to support in our shopping habits? IR reform is not about our individual rights, just listen to our leaders. It’s about our long term industrial competitiveness.

I suggest some in this discussion grew up in an aberration of good times and my drift in the previous contribution was more about getting used to the whip cracking than being too bothered about what we thought we had. After all somebody here actually voted for this regime and they got what they deserved.

On another note: nobody has spent more time on the grass outside the factory gate debating strikes over principles than me. Rolling campaigns across states cost my family dearly during peak periods of major industry automation.

Some of us just melted away and became one man contractor outfits. But for the most we still carried up to date union cards, partly to support our mates and their reps left behind struggling with the change.

The smart ones I knew started to employ others and a few never looked back. Today they would have fully adopted IT as we know it. The Bill Gates of this world moved on from their first job too. I bet unions are irrelevant at Microsoft and so are the courts. Ask Bill. It’s a reality that movers and shakers win the day.

We should be used to that here now. To get a grip on what is happening we must look beyond Telstra to say AWA or the veggie growers and perhaps some private schools then ask; what happened to Sidchrome?

Taz, You didn'read my blog. I was tricked and bullied out the gate. I was only a lad. I was a very good consientious worker. I was signed up the next at another factory based on my work ethic and skill. I even got a reference from from my immediate foreman. You defend actions like those all you want, it doesn't change the fact I was unfairly treated. You say you are unionist but you come accross as a managers' boy. This new IR will allow youngsters all over this country to be treated unfairly. It is as whacky world when a so-called unionist supports that kind of unfairness to workers..