Finally forward to fairness

The Rudd Government has taken the first major steps towards abolishing WorkChoices after the Workplace Relations Amendment (Transition to Forward With Fairness) Bill was passed by Federal Parliament on 19 March and became law on 28 March.

The Bill is the pivotal first stage of Labor's workplace agenda which outlaws future AWAs, phases out existing AWAs by 2013 and moves to rebuild the industrial relations system savaged by the Howard Government.

Interim arrangements called Individual Transitional Employment Agreements (ITEAs) will now be ushered in.

The new laws also set in train a process for a fair and modernised set of awards and restore the requirement that workplace agreements cannot disadvantage workers.

The laws will remain in force until late 2009 or early 2010 by which time the Government hopes to have its new industrial relations system fully in place.

The second stage of the Government's plan to overturn WorkChoices will be introduced later this year with laws that unions expect will restore protection from unfair dismissal, reintroduce rights to bargain collectively and set up a new independent umpire and a fair industrial relations system.

But the circus - complete with plenty of clowns - unexpectedly came to town in February when the Opposition decided it would fight to insert AWAs into Labor's industrial relations legislation and use their numbers in the Senate to force the legislation before a Committee to scrutinise their economic impact.

The Opposition's delaying tactics meant that employers had additional breathing room to continue to pressure workers to sign AWAs.

Ironically, the Opposition accused the Government of trying to ram the reforms through while the Howard Government did just that with the obscenely short period they allowed for the debate and scrutiny of WorkChoices, laws it, unlike Labor, did not foreshadow at the previous election.

Then on 19 February the Opposition backflipped and announced it would support the Government's move to scrap AWAs and the following day agreed to bring forward the report back date of the Senate Committee.

The decision allowed the laws to be passed by Easter as the Government, mindful of the fact that state awards under WorkChoices expire on 27 March, planned.

Further to its bid to wipe away the stain of WorkChoices, on 14 February the Government also released a discussion paper on ten proposed minimum standards that from 1 January 2010 will apply to all awards and agreements.

The ten matters that make up the National Employment Standards (NES) include: Hours of work, Flexible working arrangements, Parental Leave, Annual Leave, Personal, Carers or Compassionate Leave, Community Service Leave, Long Service Leave, Public Holidays and Termination and Redundancy.

While the Government hopes to be able to sign off on the standards by June some definitions will be determined by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission which has also been charged with the bold task of simplifying and modernising awards based on the ten points.

When Fair Work Australia kicks off in 2010 it too will play a role in defining some definitions of the minimum standards.

The award modernisation process will need to be handled carefully to preserve the rights of those on Federal awards and those previously on state awards who were forced into the Federal system by WorkChoices.

Of greater concern is that under the modernisation process there will be no scope for state specific awards or state differentials within awards.