Race to the bottom - more proof that WorkChoices harms employees
The Workplace Research Centre just released a comprehensive research report into the effect of WorkChoices in the retail and hospitality industries. If any more proof was needed of the harm that WorkChoices causes to ordinary employees, this report provides it.
Some 20 researchers looked at every collective agreement lodged between 26 March and 8 December 2006 in hospitality and retail industries, in which many workers were previously dependent on awards and compared the pre-WorkChoices agreements with the post-WorkChoices agreements.
An important, although not unexpected, finding of the study was that, while most non-union agreements removed a number of "protected" or other conditions that were in awards, about 90% of union agreements retained protected conditions and some other conditions. The WorkChoices legislation clearly worked as the government intended - where employees lack bargaining power (ie non-unionised workplaces), they are fair pickings for unscrupulous employers. The study found that, in comparison with pre-WorkChoices awards or agreements, post-WorkChoices agreements removed:
• annual leave loading (80 percent of agreements)
• laundry allowance (79 percent of agreements)
• Saturday penalty rates (76 percent of agreements)
• Sunday penalty rates (71 percent of agreements)
• overtime rates (68 percent of agreements)
• public holiday penalty rates (60 percent of agreements)
• paid breaks (55 percent of agreements)
Further, they removed or reduced:
• decreased casual loading (74 percent of agreements)
• severance pay (65 percent of agreements)
• rostered days off (63 percent of agreements)
• limits on part time hours (62 percent of agreements)
• right to average hours over 1-4 week (62 percent of agreements)
• minimum part time daily hours (56 percent of agreements)
• time off between overtime and the next working day (54 percent of agreements).
The study also found that employees sustained very substantial decreases in earnings. Even without factoring in lost paid breaks, annual leave loading, overtime, severance or redundancy or unquantifiable matters such as losses in flexibility, rostering or family friendly arrangements, the study found that some employees lost as much as 30% of their pay as the result of WorkChoices. Part time and casual workers are the worst affected, confirming the adverse impact that WorkChoices has on women, who are most likely to be working on casual or part time basis.
As an example of some earnings losses as result of WorkChoices:
• Liquor stores: losses of between 11.9 and 31.1 percent
• Fast food: losses of between 12.5 and 21.3 percent
• Bakeries: losses of between 17.9 and 24.5 percent
• Restaurants: losses of between 10 and 12.8 percent
• Cafés: losses of between 10 and 15.7 percent.
Generally, the report found that:
(a) Retail: on average the losses were between 2 and 18 percent. The potential average gains were never more than 0.5 percent.
• Casual part time sales assistants working a 12 hour week in retail lost on average 12 percent of their earnings.
• Permanent part time workers on the same hours lost 18 percent.(b) Hospitality: the losses were between 6 and 12 percent. The only gains were in union agreements and at most these were just over 3 percent.
• Permanent part time waiting and bar staff in the hospitality industryworking a 21 hour week of split shifts lost 12 percent on average.
There was no evidence of agreements being tailored to particular workplace. In fact, almost half were template agreements drawn up by workplace consultants. This finding rebuts the government's unsubstantiated claims about employers and employees use WorkChoices to negotiate agreements that suit them. WorkChoices is being used by employers to strip away employee rights and entitlements. Where there is no or little union presence in the workplace, the employers are succeeding in that endeavour.
The following extract from a workplace consultant's webpage, set out in the report, neatly summarises how employers are using WorkChoices:
Ie - you have been granted the right to strip away employee entitlements, so go for it! What are you waiting for, its not like the workers matter under the Howard government!
This proposed use of WorkChoices is at odds with government claims about the intent of legislation. The true intent is of course to drastically change the power balance between employer and employee, allowing the former almost complete control over the industrial rights of the latter, but you won't see this in any WorkChoices advertisement.
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