Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:668;Page:15281] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Along with my colleagues I rise with a heavy heart as we commence the second reading of the Employment Relations Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill is unfair unjustified unnecessary and unbalanced. I will repeat that: unfair unjustified unnecessary and unbalanced. This amendment bill is contrary to the objective of the Employment Relations Act which is meant to be about productive employment relations. This bill will worsen employment relations. The objective of the Act is good-faith behaviour. Well we will not see a lot of that behaviour in some cases. 
Also the Act recognises the inherent inequality of power in employment relationships. Listening to that side of the House one would think employment was a level playing field and that it was just like any other contract like buying and selling a product. The difference of course is that it is about people. It is about people who have relationships in the workplace that need to be fostered and need to be respectful in order for us to achieve good outcomes. This bill flies in the face of that. 
It has been the history of this country that for many decades employment rights improved. Things got better not worse. We all expected that our children and our grandchildren would get better wages and have better conditions of work than we had. That has been undermined significantly in recent times and this legislation is just another nail in the coffin. We are going backwards—back to the future. This legislation has the hallmarks of many aspects of the Employment Contracts Act. It is another attack from a list of many that this Government has put in place in 2 years. It makes our workplaces less fair less safe and it will lead to worse wages and conditions. It will certainly see our workplaces become less respectful places. For many workers as I know from my experience as a union official being respected at work and being treated with respect is a really important part of what workers want. Being sacked without reason and without redress is not respectful. 
This bill covers a number of things: it provides for the extension of the 90-day fire-at-will provision to all employers it restricts union access to the workplace and it has a range of changes in relation to the personal grievance system. It has some changes about employment institutions and actually some positive changes about labour inspector roles. I will focus on a couple of those changes. I will focus on the access provisions the 90-day no-rights provisions and reinstatement as a primary remedy. 
My colleague Darien Fenton explained that restrictions on union access will have negative consequences. I reinforce the point that there was no need for this change. The regulatory impact statement states: “There does not appear to be widespread evidence of union representatives exercising their current rights to enter workplaces in an inappropriate way resulting in disruption for business operations or adversely impacting on the employment relationship …”. Members of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee if they are honest about this will know that just about every employer that presented submissions—they were primarily larger employers or associations—recognised that unions used the access provisions properly and in accord with the current constraints in the Employment Relations Act. The current provisions say that the access provisions have to be used at a reasonable time in a reasonable way taking account of security and health and safety provisions. They already exist. So what is the need for this change? What it boils down to is that this legislation will provide roadblocks to unions accessing their members at the workplace. Irrespective of whether it is a health and safety matter or a matter of organising for collective bargaining it will provide the worst employers with a way to drag out the right of access and that will have negative consequences. 
I also reinforce the point about health and safety. As Ms Fenton said it was originally felt that the health and safety element should be left out of the changes. If access provisions are going to be changed I agree that the right of entry in relation to health and safety should be left out. I say to members opposite—I asked about this in the select committee—that if workers who are injured or killed at work were trying to get their union access to come and check out the health and safety problem those members will have that on their conscience because frankly it is unreasonable that people cannot access their union official when they need to if there is a health and safety problem. 
The whole 90-day fire-at-will provision is full of holes. Extending it to all workplaces is a sop to the right and the use of words such as “choice” is just ridiculous. In a high unemployment situation such as we have now there is no real choice. 
Allan Peachey 
: The socialists think choice is ridiculous! 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: Mr Peachey knows that a “take it or leave it” job offer is not a choice in a situation of high unemployment. Would a young worker or migrant worker argue the toss with an employer about this? No they would not so they do not have a real choice. 
A person being sacked without reason or redress has implications not only for that worker; many people have talked about the fact that it will have implications for other workers in that workplace. If they see somebody unfairly treated like that it will undermine trust. People will become resentful and angry about that sort of treatment. In the past before the current personal grievance provisions there were often wildcat strikes over the fact that people were unfairly treated and unfairly dismissed. If workers do not have the right to take personal grievances I expect those strikes may well happen in the future as well. 
Frankly just think about how the worker who is dismissed unfairly would feel how the worker who is dismissed without reason or recourse would feel. Imagine if your daughter or your nephew or your grandchild came home to say that the boss just sacked them. When you ask why they reply that they do not know as they were not told. Imagine how you would feel; I bet you would feel angry— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: Sorry. What if that worker went to get another job and the new employer asked why they had left the last job and being truthful the person replied that they had been dismissed. A potential employer may ask why the person was dismissed. That is a perfectly reasonable question. If the person says “I don’t know.” do members opposite think that person will get that job? This bill will cause a whole lot of absolutely unfair outcomes. 
The issue of reinstatement as a primary remedy is an important one. It is quite a small-scale issue. In fact in 2007 there were only 14 reinstatements; in 2008 there were seven and in 2009 there were eight. But it is important that that provision is there; it is important to see whether in the first instance a worker can be restored to the situation he or she was in prior to an unfair act. It is a particularly important protection for union delegates and other union activists. 
The combined effect of these changes will mean that the vulnerable workers will be most disadvantaged. Women workers go in and out of the workplace more often so they will face 90 days’ employment with no rights more frequently. Young workers and many people entering the workforce for the first time know their rights less well and are often less confident and less able to negotiate issues like 90 days with no rights. 
It will be more difficult for workers to improve their wages and conditions. Potentially there will be increased disputation. But also sadly these changes will mean that the attempt to get our workplaces on to a more modern footing to have the high-trust highly productive workplaces that this country needs to lift its economic performance and to close the wage gap with Australia will be under threat as a result. We cannot have high-trust highly productive workplaces when people have the threat of unfair dismissal hanging over them. 
During the Committee stage I will have much more time to deal with specific points but I thank the nearly 8000 submitters and the Department of Labour officials. The officials were put under enormous pressure because of yet again another rushed process by this Government. They did a very good job under great pressure of providing us with the advice we needed. Overwhelmingly the submitters did not support this legislation. 
In conclusion I just want to say we had a submission from a 14-year-old woman. I do not think anyone in that room if they were honest could say they did not feel how strongly she was concerned about what it would be like for young workers in workplaces who face unfair dismissal.