Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:675;Page:21120] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 I have to say that I agree with the member Keith Locke. I think that the Employment Relations (Secret Ballot for Strikes) Amendment Act should come into force some time far far away from 1 year after the date on which it receives the Royal assent which is what is currently in the bill. Perhaps 10 or 15 years after the date on which it receives the Royal assent might not be such a bad idea because this is absolutely ridiculous legislation. But it is more than just ridiculous. The logic behind it—as far as I can tell and I use “logic” in the broadest sense of the word—is fundamentally flawed. 
This is a bill that will put in place secret ballots for strikes—only for strikes I might add—when in fact that is what generally occurs. This is based on some premise of a time past. I just thought I would elucidate to members opposite what a strike is because we are talking about bringing into commencement in a year’s time legislation that will require secret ballots for strikes. Now a strike can be a number of things. It is the “walk out of the door” scenario that people think of—the full withdrawal of labour but it is other things as well. It is also refusing or failing after any such discontinuance to resume or return to employment. It is about breaking employment agreements. It is about refusing or failing to accept engagement for work in which one is usually employed and it is about reducing normal output or the normal rate of work. 
I go into some depth on this word “strike” because it is not an easy thing to do. It has never been an easy thing for people to do. People think about it and make a decision to strike in very extreme circumstances—usually when they are trying their level best to improve their wages and conditions of employment and that has become tougher and tougher. As the economy has tightened up under a National-led Government and when employers feel perhaps more emboldened to play a harder ball if you like it has become tougher for unions to negotiate collective agreements and get reasonable outcomes for workers. Striking is a last resort. It has always been a last resort to try to improve wages and conditions of employment. 
This legislation which would come into force a year from receiving the Royal assent as provided for in clause 2 the commencement clause would require strike action—and that is quite a broad thing as I have just outlined—to have a secret ballot before it could happen. And that secret ballot could be challenged by employers. Later on we will talk about that a little bit more but many of us can see that this could provide grounds for litigation driven by employers trying to stop unions taking action to try to improve their wages and conditions of employment. So again that is another reason to push out the commencement date of this bill because it will lead potentially to significant legal challenges by employers hell-bent on stopping workers improving their wages and conditions of employment through taking industrial action—through taking strike action. 
Now of course the other thing this bill does is that it focuses only on one side of the coin. Industrial action has two parts: strikes and lockouts. We can see that they are one part after the other in the Employment Relations Act: section 81 is around the meaning of strikes and section 82 is around the meaning of lockouts. But that is not affected by this bill so the commencement would bring into force a regime that applies only to one part of the industrial relations landscape not the other which is the lockout. The lockout is effectively where employers take actions that stop workers doing their job and that also therefore impacts on these people’s pockets. It means that they are not earning money. Certainly there have been some very very ugly lockouts in this country’s history and I am not talking just about the 1951 lockout but much more recently the Progressive Enterprises lockout—and that would not require any sort of ballot. It did not require any sort of ballot. A similar very large-scale lockout like that which put enormous pressure on to very low-paid workers would not under the provisions of this bill require any form of ballot any form of consultation and the management of a company could just go ahead.