Hulls refuses investigation of Workdirections Australia Pty Ltd

Victoria’s Minister for Industrial Relations Rob Hulls has refused to initiate an inquiry into industrial relations practices at WorkDirections Australia Pty Ltd.

Shadow Industrial Relations Minister Robert Clark said Mr Hulls’ response to recent allegations about companies owned by Therese Rein, wife of Kevin Rudd, proves Labor’s stance on industrial relations reform is purely a politically motivated and taxpayer-funded campaign against the Federal Government.

At Wednesday’s hearing of the Victorian Parliament’s all-party Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, Rob Hulls was confronted with media reports alleging that:

WorkDirections Australia Pty Ltd illegally stripped its Victorian workers of key award conditions, including removing penalty rates, overtime and allowances for an extra 45 cents an hour;
WorkDirections workers are required to work half an hour’s unpaid overtime each day, leaving them $1,200 worse off each year;
58 workers – more than one quarter of its Victorian workforce – were underpaid a total of $70,000; and
a Victorian worker was sacked after standing up to a bully boss over “disgusting and inhumane” treatment.
The contracts involved in this case were not Australian Workplace Agreements under the Howard Government’s reforms, but were common law contracts of the sort Federal Labor is advocating in their own industrial relations policy.

Instead of supporting an inquiry into the allegations by the Victorian Workplace Rights Advocate (WRA), Rob Hulls claimed it was nothing to do with him. Mr Hulls said that the WRA had not received a complaint and that the Commonwealth’s Office of Workplace Services was investigating.

However, the legislation establishing the WRA makes clear that one of the WRA’s functions is to investigate any “illegal, unfair or otherwise inappropriate” industrial relations practices in Victoria (Workplace Rights Advocate Act 2005, s.5(1)(d)).

The Act also makes clear that the WRA can undertake such investigations whether or not a complaint has been received, and can be requested to act by the Minister:

The WRA may carry out his or her functions and exercise his or her powers at the request of the Minister or of any other person or body or on his or her own motion. (Section 5(2))

Reluctance from the Minister and the WRA to investigate clearly demonstrates the Bracks Government is not genuinely concerned about workers but is purely driven by politics when it comes to industrial reform. This is why the Liberal Party opposed the creation of the WRA in the first place.

Then again, perhaps Rob Hulls thinks the Howard Government’s Office of Workplace Services is protecting workers the way it was designed to – fairly.