Brumby’s radical IR laws bad for employers and workers

The Liberal Party will oppose two radical industrial relations Bills
introduced by the Brumby government when the Bills are debated in
Parliament this week.

The Victorian Workers’ Wages Protection Bill requires employees to be paid
in cash unless they have otherwise authorised in writing, and it imposes
complex and unnecessary new rules about deductions from workers’ pay. The
Bill hits employers with penalties of up to $10,000 which can be ordered
to be paid to the relevant union, for any breaches.

This Bill means any single employee who exercises a right to be paid in
cash can force an employer to draw wages cash from the bank, have the
money counted out into a pay envelope and arrange for secure delivery to
the employee.

John Brumby needs to wake up to the fact we are living in the twenty-first
century, not the 1980s.

People these days in most occupations expect to be paid their wages by
bank deposit. Few employers and employees would ever have expected a new
law to be introduced requiring written authorisations to do so.

If this Bill is passed, it will mean Victorian employers will have to comb
back through all their employment records to find out if any
authorisations have previously been given, and then go around their
workplace asking employees to fill out a useless form to authorise
something that has been standard practice for years.

This piece of useless red tape will cost businesses time and money, cut
productivity and deter employment. It is simply a device to allow unions
to extract funds from employers and create difficulties for employers and
workers who have entered into workplace agreements.

The new rules in the Bill about deductions from workers’ pay are
completely unnecessary. The law is already clear that a deduction cannot
be made from a worker’s pay without authorisation. If an unauthorised
deduction is made, it means the worker is not being paid the wages to
which they are entitled. The Commonwealth’s Workplace Ombudsman will
vigorously pursue any employer who is not paying the proper wages under
Commonwealth law.

The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Family Responsibilities) Bill provides
that employers must not ‘unreasonably’ refuse to accommodate the parental
or carer responsibilities of employees or contract workers. An employer
may be required to:

• offer work for additional hours on some days to provide a shorter
working week;
• allow an employee to ‘occasionally’ work from home; and
• reschedule staff meetings so the employee can attend.

Employers who breach the law can be taken to the Equal Opportunity
Commission and to VCAT and be ordered to pay compensation or to comply
with directions VCAT may give.

This Bill seeks to give to the union movement the sorts of demands that
were rejected by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) in
the 2005 Family Provision test case.

In that case, the AIRC ruled out the ACTU’s and the state and territory
governments’ demands that employers should be obliged not to unreasonably
refuse any changes to work arrangements.

The AIRC said:

‘it is important that our decision should be a cautious one and that we
should not attempt to deal with all of the situations in which employees
may seek additional flexibility. It is evident that the range of different
conditions of employment potentially affected by the applications before
us is very broad. It would be complex and potentially unfair to employers
to introduce changes covering such a broad range of conditions. (Decision,
August 2005, p.103)

Trying to coerce employers under threat of an Equal Opportunity Commission
investigation and a VCAT hearing is completely the wrong way to go about
helping workers to meet family and carer responsibilities.

Discrimination against workers on the grounds of parental or carer
responsibilities is already illegal. This bill goes beyond discrimination,
and seeks to judge what it is reasonable or unreasonable for employers to
do for individual workers.

The best way to help workers to meet parental and carer responsibilities
is through a strong economy that creates jobs, and through flexible
employment laws that allow individual employers and employees to agree on
mutually beneficial arrangements.

The vast majority of employers are happy to make reasonable arrangements
that will allow them to attract or retain good workers with family or
carer responsibilities.

However, the last thing employers want is an outside commission or
tribunal second-guessing what will or will not be feasible in their
workplace.

If this Bill is passed, every Victorian employer will know that if they
agree to flexible arrangements for one employee, those arrangements can be
cited as a precedent by any other employee. The Bill is thus likely to
prove counter-productive, with employers reluctant to agree to any
arrangements that may be used against them in future.

The Bill also sets the framework for an open-ended form of ‘unfair
treatment’ claims by disgruntled employees that is just as bad, if not
worse, than the ‘unfair dismissal’ claims that have caused so much cost
and injustice for small business.

These two Bills show that the Brumby government is out of touch with the
real world of employment. This legislation is a foretaste of things that
could come across Australia if the nation were to end up with wall-to-wall
Labor governments after 24 November.

By imposing unnecessary, unreasonable and counter-productive new burdens
on employers, legislation such as this will add to costs and risks, reduce
employment and make it harder for workers with family or carer
responsibilities to secure jobs that give them work arrangements that suit
their needs.