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IR Bill: links update #1
Begining today, resource and links updates on the new IR legislation. This first collection comes from the Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library. Check out their Employment Law page for an extensive selection of resources on the history of Employment Law. See also Andrews v Beazley: first strikes in Parliamentary IR debate for the second reading speeches of both the Minister and the leader of the Oppostition.
Law Internet Resources
Employment Law Guide
Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005
This guide contains links to documents and Internet resources on the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005.
This Bill was introduced into the House of Representatives on 2 November 2005.
- Legislative documents
- Parliamentary progress
- Parliamentary Library publications
- Key government documents
- Journal articles
Legislative documents
- Text of the Bill (PDF, 1.5 MB)
- Explanatory Memorandum (PDF, 1.3 MB)
Parliamentary consideration
House of Representatives
Debates (Hansard)
statement by the Prime Minister, 26 May 2005Introduction and Second Reading, 2 November 2005, pp. 1–19
Votes and Proceedings
- Introduction and Second Reading, 2 November 2005, pp. 711–20 (1–10 of the PDF)
Senate
Debates (Hansard)
- Referral to Committee, 12 October 2005, pp. 112–29
Journals
- Referral to Committee,12 October 2005, pp. 1275–6 (pp. 17–18 of the PDF)
Senate Committee inquiries
Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee
- Inquiry into Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005 (report due 22 November 2005)
- Report onWorkplace Agreements, tabled 31 October 2005
Parliamentary Library publications
- Workplace relations reforms: a chronology of business, community and Government responses (includes a chronology and links to documents from 28 September 2004 onwards)
- WorkChoices: A New Workplace Industrial Relations System—A Summary (Parliament House users only; last updated 25 October 2005)
- Federal workplace relations plans and the States in 2005 (Parliament House users only; last updated 18 October 2005)
- Workplace Relations Legislation: Bills Passed, Rejected or Lapsed, 38th–40th Parliaments (1996–2004) (E-brief, 8 July 2005)
Key government documents
- WorkChoices website
- Council of Australian Governments meeting, 3 June 2005 (states refuse to refer their powers to the Commonwealth)
- Hon. Kevin Andrews (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations), Building better workplace relations, media release, 26 May 2005
N.B. For a full list of key documents, see theParliamentary Library chronology
Journal articles on the constitutionality of a national employment law
In date order; some of these articles are available to Parliament House users only.
- A. Gray, ‘Precedent and Policy: Australian Industrial Relations Reform in the 21st Century Using the Corporations Power’,Deakin Law Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 2005, pp. 440–59
- R. McCallum, ‘The Australian Constitution and the Shaping of Our Federal and State Labour Laws’,Deakin Law Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 2005, pp. 460–9
- G. Williams, ‘The Constitution and a National Industrial Relations Regime’, Deakin Law Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 2005, pp. 498–510
- A. Stewart, ‘Workplace relations: the revolution begins here’,New Matilda, 1 June 2005
- L. Johns, ‘National IR system is logical’,HR Monthly, April 2005, pp. 36–7
- D. McCann, ‘First head revisited: a single industrial relations system under the trade and commerce power’, Sydney Law Review, 26(1), March 2004, pp. 75–106
- G. Williams, ‘The first step to a national industrial relations regime? Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment) Bill 2002’,Australian Journal of Labour Law, 2003, 16(1), May 2003, pp. 94–8
- G. Williams,Submission to the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations & Education Committee Inquiry into the Provisions of the Workplace Relations Amendment (Termination of Employment Bill) 2002, 6 February 2003
- N. Williams and A. Gotting, ‘The interrelationship between the industrial power and other heads of power in Australian industrial law’,Australian Bar Review, 20(3), February 2001, pp. 264–82
- S. Eichenbaum, ‘What chance a single industrial relations system in Australia?’, Law Institute Journal, 76(6) July 2002, pp. 66–9
- P. Lane, ‘Commonwealth control of corporate industrial relations’,Australian Law Journal, vol. 75(11), November 2001, pp. 670–2
- A. Stewart, ‘Federal labour law and new uses for the corporations power’,Australian Journal of Labour Law,14(2) September 2001, pp. 145–68
- W. J. Ford, ‘Using the corporations power to regulate industrial relations’,Employment Law Bulletin, 6(9) January 2001, pp. 70–7
- W. J. Ford, ‘Reconstructing Australian labour law: a constitutional perspective’,Australian Journal of Labour Law, 10(1), March 1997, pp. 1–30
- W. J. Ford, ‘The Constitution and the reform of Australian industrial relations’, Australian Journal of Labour Law, 7(2) August 1994, pp. 105–31
- S. E. K. Hulme, ‘A constitutional basis for the federal coalition’s industrial relations policy—and related matters’,Economic and Labour Relations Review, 4(1), June 1993, pp. 62–76
- A. Stewart, ‘Federal regulation and the use of powers other than the industrial power’ in ACIRRT Monograph No. 9,A New Province for Legalism: Legal Issues and the Deregulation of Industrial Relations, Proceedings of a Conference, 30 April 1993
- G. Lindell, ‘The corporations and races powers’,Federal Law Review, 14(3), March 1984, pp. 219–52
- D. Rose, ‘Comment on the corporations power and the races power’,Federal Law Review, 14(3), March 1984, pp. 253-7
- J. O’Donovan, ‘Can the contract of employment be regulated through the corporations power?’, Australian Law Journal, 51(5), May 1977, pp. 234–46
For more general information, see the Parliamentary Library’s Employment Law page.
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re: IR Bill: links update #1
How come all this information is available on Webdiary, yet the idiot Labor MP's knew nothing about it? Maybe that's the reason they are in opposition.
re: IR Bill: links update #1
Some points picked up from today's newspaper articles:
* The Office of Empoyment Advocate will no longer write to employees asking if they had genuinely consented to signing an individual contract (Australian 4/11 page 8)
* The Office of Employment Advocate will now act as a post box for the agreements, not check their contents to ensure they complied with the requirements set out in WorkChoices(Australian 4/11 page 8)
* Union officials will have to pass a "fit and proper person test" to enter workplaces (!!!!). They will only be allowed to investigate an AWA breach if the employee has made a written request inviting them to enter (thus leaving a convenient paper trail for employers keen to exercise their broader dismissal rights)(Daily Telegraph 4/11 page 11)
* Staff laid off for "operational reasons" ("reasons of an economic, technological, structural or similar nature") will no longer be able to complain to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (Daily Telegraph 4/11 page 11)
* Workers should "not be put under duress over an AWA" but making an AWA a condition of employment does not constitute duress...figure that one out.(Daily Telegraph 4/11 page 11)
* Employers will be able to require employees to work "reasonable additional hours" on top of a 38 hour week, with no overtime or penalty rates - this despite Howard's undertaking that a 38 hour week would be one of five basic conditions which would be legally entrenched as minimum standards (Australian Financial Review 4/11 page 1)
* In breach of international labour conventions, union officials face fines of up to $33,000 if they try to discuss with employees issues such as trade union training leave, union right of entry or provisions limiting use of contract labour that are to be banned from employment agreements(Australian 4/11 page 8)
* "Pattern bargaining" - bargaining over a number of companies - will become illegal. This is not even illegal in the US. (Australian 4/11 page 8)
re: IR Bill: links update #1
All this was known by the trade union movement prior to the legislation being introduced, although it is true that the actual legislation is even more prescriptive and punitive than even I thought it would be. Unfortunately sections of the ALP front bench prefers not to talk to the trade union movement, in the hope that if they distance themselves from the union movement Howard and his masters in the BCA, ACCI and the AiG won't be nasty to them anymore and won't raise the union bogey.
It's pathetic, since polling clearly shows that whether a worker is a member of a union or not, they expect the movement to speak up for them and their rights. The union movement is going back to what it always does best, and the ALP will rapidly fade like a latterday Democrats if they don't get off their backsides and start to speaking for ordinary working families instead of their imagined 'middle' that meet in big rooms over $500 dinners, and waffle on about being 'back in business'.
Wake up Kimbo and Stevie - the Mack truck has arrived and it's got 'Our Rights at Work' written all over it. The fight hasn't even begun.
re: IR Bill: links update #1
If Labor cannot win this fight then they really don't deserve to be a poltical party. It's being handed to them on a plate. The Mack truck is here alright but it's careering out of control straight for the McMansion belt. If they are deluded enough to think they will be able to still pay those huge mortgages within a few years then they really deserve everything that's about to happen to them.
My reading of these bills to date shows I could re-structure my business with minimum trouble and knock around 20% of wages within a couple of months. Anyone employed by others should realise - every benefit and safeguard you have enjoyed in your lifetime has just vanished.