Submission to the Workchoices Bill Inquiry

President: Rev Dr Dean Drayton BSc (Hons) BD PhD THE UNITING CHURCH IN AUSTRALIA SYDNEY OFFICE Piccadilly Court Level 8 222 Pitt Street Sydney PO Box A2266 Sydney South NSW 1235 Phone: (02) 8267 4202 Fax: (02) 8267 4222 Email: [email protected] Web: http://assembly2003.uca.org.au Attn: Mr John Carter Secretary Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee Department of the Senate Parliament House via email to: [email protected] Dear Mr Carter, Re: Inquiry into the Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005 Please accept the Uniting Church in Australia’s submission to the WorkChoices Bill Inquiry. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss our submission with the Committee. Please contact my assistant Jenny Bertalan on (02) 8267 4202 or [email protected] in order to arrange a suitable time. Yours sincerely, Rev Dr Dean Drayton President Uniting Church in Australia WITNESS THE GLORY OF GOD Submission to Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee Inquiry into the Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Bill 2005 Submitter: The Uniting Church in Australia Organisation: Address: PO Box A2266, Sydney South NSW 1235 Phone: 02 8267 4202 – Jenny Bertalan Fax: 02 8267 4222 Email: [email protected] 2 The Uniting Church In Australia Submission to the INQUIRY INTO THE PROVISIONS OF THE WORKPLACE RELATIONS AMENDMENT (WORK CHOICES) BILL 2005 November 2005 Contact: The Uniting Church in Australia National Assembly Rev Dr Dean Drayton President PO Box A2266 Sydney South NSW 1235 Phone (02) 8267 4239 FAX (02) 8267 4222 Email: [email protected] 3 INTRODUCTION The Uniting Church in Australia welcomes this opportunity to comment on certain aspects of the Government’s WorkChoices legislation. The Uniting Church in Australia seeks to bear witness to God’s call for the continuing renewal and reconciliation of all creation1 through its worship, service and advocacy, and in partnership with other Christian churches. Part of the witness of the Uniting Church in Australia is to challenge the structures that create and perpetuate poverty and injustice at all levels: individual, state, national and international. At its seventh Assembly in 1994, the Church adopted its Call for Justice Concerning Employment. It states: Society has a responsibility to ensure that the economy is based on appropriate values and goals, and is directed according to the wishes of society. It is not appropriate that the economy shape and control society. The Uniting Church continues to advocate for a just employment relations system fulfilling the needs of members of the Australian community, both employed and unemployed. Employment forms an important and enduring part of our social identity; it affects and structures our time with families and friends, and relationships with our local and national communities. Government policy at all levels should reflect the inherent need of humans to work with dignity, to contribute to the community and to provide the basic necessities and comforts of life. Dignity in employment, and the ability for the unemployed to access dignified employment, is the Church’s concern in its response to the proposed legislation. The Uniting Church seeks also to contribute to the inquiry from the point of view of a large employer, whose operations will be affected by the changes proposed in the legislation. We are concerned that the new Fair Pay and Conditions standard may prove inadequate to ensure an ethical standard of minimum employment, an assessment informed by the competing needs of maintaining quality staff and ethical employment standards, and market competitiveness in tender processes. The Church believes that every individual is equal before God regardless of background. The world is a community in which all members are responsible for each other and the strongest have a special responsibility for the vulnerable. In its Statement to the Nation at its inauguration in 1977, the Uniting Church pledged “to hope and work for a nation whose goals are not guided by self interest alone, but by concern for persons everywhere – the family of the One God – the God made known in Jesus of Nazareth (John 10:38) the one who gave his life for others.” In this spirit, the Uniting Church offers its submission to the Senate’s inquiry into the WorkChoices legislation. 1 Basis of Union, paragraph 1 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS section page Summary of Recommendations 6 Part 1: The Uniting Church as Employer 10 i. The Church as Employer Principles 10 ii. Is the Uniting Church Covered by the Legislation? 11 iii. The Need for Awards 12 iv. Funding for the Community Services Sector 13 v. Termination Redress Reforms and Church Operations 14 vi. Our Relationship with Trade Unions: Prohibited Content 14 Part 2: Concerns for Vulnerable Members of Society 16 1. The Fair Pay and Conditions Standard 16 2. The Australian Fair Pay Commission 21 3. Workplace Agreements Under the New System 25 4. Access to Redress on Termination of Employment 29 5. The Status of Women Under WorkChoices 32 6. Connecting WorkChoices with Welfare Reform 34 7. A Family Affair: Outworkers in the Clothing Industry 36 8. The Uniting Church’s Position on Trade Unionism 40 Appendix 1: Uniting Church Policy Statements 41 Appendix 2: International Human Rights Instruments 44 5 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS The Church has significant reservations about the impact of the introduction of the WorkChoices legislation on its operations. Currently the Award system works well as a benchmark for minimum ethical employment standards, and prevents the erosion of underpaid community sector employees’ conditions. We need the legislation to clarify whether it applies to the whole or to parts (in this case, which parts?) of the Uniting Church, so that our legal obligations as employer are clear and our workers (and their unions) know which legal system now applies. If the WorkChoices legislation applies to any part of the Uniting Church, then we would prefer that it applies to the whole Uniting Church. As a large employer in the not-for-profit and care sectors, representing disparate interests, the Church recommends the following: 1. The whole not-for-profit community services sector be either clearly covered by or excluded from the bill, so that the same rules apply throughout the sector. 2. The bill be amended to include a clear process by which award pay and conditions can be upgraded over time, so they continue as a useful standard. At the very least, the Australian Fair Pay Commision (AFPC) should be required to maintain the real value of wage rates in awards, and to take account of issues of equity. 3. The bill be amended to require the AFPC to have a public process of consultation with employers, unions and workers. This process should be specifically laid out in the bill so as to avoid confusion. 4. The Australian Government clarify the basis on which it will determine what are reasonable wages costs for the purposes of commercial and not for profit providers tendering to provide services to or on behalf of the Government 5. The Australian Government not require employers to offer Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) to their employees as a condition of government contracts. 6. The bill be amended to remove section 113, which exempts employers with 100 employees or less from accessing unfair dismissal procedures. 7. The bill be amended to remove the changed definition of operational reasons for termination of employment in section 112 of the bill. 8. Instead of sections 112 and 113 of the bill, that the bill be amended to tighten the unfair dismissal provisions to preclude vexatious and unsubstantiated claims within a framework that adheres to the principles of natural justice and to provide more certainty for employers when standard 6 termination processes are followed or where workers clearly lack the competence for the position to which they have been appointed. 9. The bill be amended to remove sections which further restrict the right of entry of unions to workplaces. 10. The bill not include sections about prohibited content of agreements. The Uniting Church is also concerned by the impact of the proposed legislative changes on the most vulnerable workers and on the job prospects of the unemployed. We believe that the Government’s new minimum conditions of employment are not adequate and will not be effective in maintaining an appropriate standard of living for low-paid workers and their families. Lowering the floor for working arrangements, failing to include greater protections and resources for workers on individual agreements, and encouraging an approach wherein personal litigation in the Federal Court is the only means of redress for these workers will impact heavily on these vulnerable people. In particular we are concerned for the legislation’s interaction with the Welfare to Work reforms, its impact on outworkers and on the status of women in the workforce. As an advocate for vulnerable members of our society, informed by our faith and our extensive experience in service provision, the Church recommends the following: 1. The Award System should remain the measure of minimum employment conditions, and the Standard be revised to this effect. This is imperative to ensure that real wages and conditions do not fall under the new system. 2. Penalty and Overtime payments must be preserved for the future, and not simply for one generation of agreement making; employees must be adequately compensated for working anti-social hours. 3. ‘Reasonable hours’ of overtime work must be defined in the Act [S91C] to give a clear indication of acceptable employer behaviour; 4. The bill should be amended to require a full wages review at intervals of no more than two years. 5. The bill should include a requirement that the review process involve public consultation, including the receiving of submissions and public hearings.

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