Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the beginning of my remarks I just want to reflect on a couple of things that the previous speaker mentioned. At the beginning of his remarks, the member for Wannon called on the member for Griffith to smile. Last night there were lots of parties around the place. There were lots of festivities.

A group of people who were not smiling when they came in to work today were our hardworking cleaners. With all the parties that come about come lots of bottles and lots of mess, but yet these cleaners do not get extra time to clean up our mess. They do not get extra time to make sure that this place is ready for work. They had to get on and work harder than they ever had before to make sure that this place was clean and ready for business today, cleaning up the mess left behind by people in this chamber and in this House today. Their productivity rates today were through the roof. They had to work overtime, really hard, to make sure this place was clean and ready.

This bill actually has nothing to do with productivity. It may say the word 'productivity', but it actually will not increase productivity in the workplace. This bill uses the word 'productivity' to actually attack workers, attack unions and attack their ability to bargain for a decent wage.

Our cleaners, as I mentioned, this morning worked really hard. They also today met to endorse their log of claims. The story of our cleaners here in Parliament House is a frustrating one, not just for themselves but for all the cleaners that we have in the country, particularly those working in government buildings. They have had a pay freeze. They have not had a wage increase for some time. Our cleaners here endorsed their log of claims asking their cleaning company, who is contracted by this government, for an extra 85c an hour. That would basically help them keep up with the cost of living. They are on minimum wage and they are hoping for, in their process of bargaining, an extra 85c an hour to help meet the cost of living.

Yet this bill says that they need to talk about productivity first, as part of the bargaining process. I hope their employer in the government is ready to talk about productivity and talk about increasing their time when it comes to the end of session to make it a fairer productivity. The cleaners here already work superhard, and I do not think anybody in this building would deny that they work superhard. Yet the requirements in this bill say that the employer has the ability to say, 'Before we even talk about you getting a decent pay rise because your pay has been frozen, we need to talk about productivity.'

The cleaners here have a very good story to talk about when it comes to productivity. There are working harder than any other person in this building to make sure this building is ready. I dare any member of parliament to stand up and say that they are not productive workers and that they are not meeting a high standard of productivity. The reason why the cleaners have to now bargain for a fair pay rise is because this government has scrapped the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines—another attack by this government on some of the lowest-paid workers in this building.

This bill, as I have said, is not about productivity. This bill is poorly constructed and bad policy. Its wording, I believe, is actually quite tricky. It actually seeks to undermine the genuine good faith bargaining process. A few words, a few changes and a few phrases swing the entire process of collective bargaining in the employers' favour. I am probably being a bit stronger on this than some of my other colleagues, but I just wanted to demonstrate a couple of examples of how this bill will swing in favour of militant employers as opposed to the militant unions the government likes to bash and beat the drum about.

Within this debate the government does not recognise that not every employer genuinely wants to bargain in good faith. There is a risk that this bill will give veto power to employers. A new requirement, which states that the Fair Work Commission must be satisfied that improvements in productivity were discussed during the bargaining phase of the agreement, has now been inserted into this bill. What do you do if you are that low-paid cleaner, if you are already working superhard and you have backbreaking workloads? How do you become more productive if you are already working excessive workloads?

This bill gets away from the core principle of collective bargaining, where employers and employees sit down and genuinely engage in good faith bargaining. Introducing all of these new requirements that must be satisfied before the commission can approve an agreement puts more and more restriction on what can be bargained. It is not inconceivable to think of a situation where an employer says: 'I don't want to talk about productivity until we've discussed cutting wages, holidays and other conditions. I don't want to even talk about what we need to do to satisfy a silly rule that's been put in for the Fair Work Commissioner until we talk about cutting wages, holidays and other conditions.' There is example after example of where employers have done that. You just have to look at Victoria and what the former Liberal government did to the hard-working ambos. They refused to sit down and genuinely bargain in good faith around a log of claims before those hard-working ambos agreed to a number of conditions that the government had put on the table.

Does it mean that agreement can never be completed if a union refuses to budge on some matters? These changes will create constant deadlocks. What we need in our fair work system is not a system that creates deadlocks between bargaining groups. We need a system that allows groups to navigate their way through to an agreement. This amendment is another example of how this government, through this bill, seeks to deny workers the opportunity to genuinely bargain in good faith. It gives employers greater bargaining rights.

One of the areas which I think demonstrates this is their changes to protective action. The government have introduced a new provision which means that the Fair Work Commission must not make a protected action ballot if it is satisfied the applicant's claims are manifestly excessive, having regard to the conditions at the workplace and the industry in which the employer operates, or would significantly adversely impact the productivity of workplaces. That pretty much knocks out any form of industrial action. So when the members of the government stand up and say, 'We acknowledge that it is the right of a group of workers to take industrial action,' it is just total lip-service. The whole point of an employee being able to take industrial action is to remove their labour. So that is going to have an impact on the productivity of workplaces. This one particular change to the Fair Work Commission basically knocks out any employee's ability to take industrial action. They are using the word 'productivity' to disguise the fact that they are trying to knock out people's ability to be able to take industrial action, which has been a longstanding tradition in this country.

I have just a couple of examples when it comes to the militant employers that I have talked about. The government seeks to amend section 44(3) in the way in which the government proposes different and higher standards on unions wanting to take protected industrial action over those of employers. Let's talk about employer lockouts. The government likes to talk about militant unions, but what it is not talking about is employer lockouts.

An example is Schweppes. A few years ago around Christmas, multinational owned giant Schweppes locked out 150 workers at the Tullamarine factory. They were locked out after wanting to take protected industrial action to protect the rosters that they had. The employer locked them out because they were trying to impose on the workers a roster which would have seen them move from an eight-hour-a-day shift to a 12-hour-a-day shift, thus completely changing their workplace situation and removing something that we have held up in this country for such a long time: the eight-hour day. The employer locked them out, and these workers were without pay over the Christmas period. I will never forget that Christmas Day, being there with those workers locked out, out the front of their workplace. It was a very hot Christmas that Christmas, and they were there. They were there not because they wanted to see a massive increase in their pay. They were there because their employer wanted to radically change their roster, thus not only reducing their pay but significantly changing their workplace-life balance.

This bill is only going to aid the employers that do not want to genuinely bargain, that are actually going after fundamental basics and principles that Australians expect to have in their workplace. Another example in relation to this area has to be our cleaners and our shopping centre cleaners who, in bargaining at the Melbourne airport, also took industrial action. Pay talks broke down, again around Christmas, when 100 cleaners said that they would not accept a deal which was $4,000 a year less than other cleaners working at the airport. Again, our cleaners at the airports are low paid workers, and what the boss had put on the table through bargaining would have taken away several allowances and meal breaks which would have seen them paid $4,000 a year less. Now, if these particular amendments were already in place, the cleaners' ability to stand up and say, 'That's not fair. We won't accept that deal,' could have been knocked out by the commission because of the impact on productivity in the workplace. Yes, if a cleaner stops work, it impacts on the productivity of a workplace. It absolutely does because it means the toilets do not get cleaned. That is what it means.

This bill is not, as the government has said, about ensuring that workers continue to have that right to take industrial action. This bill is not, as this government says, about productivity. This bill is entirely about weakening workers' ability to collectively and genuinely bargain. This bill is about enhancing the employers who do not want to do the right thing and about giving them greater powers. There are examples that we have going on currently and in the last five to 10 years where companies have used bargaining to lock out workers, where companies have used bargaining to radically cut wages and conditions. Yet there is no attempt in this bill to see a levelling up of that playing field. This bill goes after workers and puts the veto opportunity in the employers' hands. This bill seeks to undermine the entire principle of collective bargaining, and it should be opposed.

What disappoints me the most about this bill is that the government have just not been honest. They are hiding behind the words of productivity. They are hiding behind the words of good-faith bargaining. But it could not be further from the truth. It denies Australian workers the right to collectively bargain in good faith with the employers. Collective bargaining has been a key feature of a fair and modern democratic society. Worse still, it creates deadlock in Fair Work Australia. There are going to be disputes where the employer or the employees may go too far. There are going to be disputes which need to be resolved by an independent umpire—Fair Work Australia. Yet all this bill does is make their job harder. It will create more deadlocks, more lockouts and more noisy actions, because it does not create an environment for genuine good-faith bargaining.

In conclusion, I hope that our cleaners here at Parliament House do not ever have to file for a protected industrial action ballot. I hope, when their employer reaches an agreement with a fair pay rise and goes to the government and say this is what we need increased in our contract price to pay your cleaners a fair deal, that the government listens and does the right thing by the hard-working cleaners, because under this bill they may not have the ability to take industrial action to get a fair outcome. I ask the House to oppose the bill.

Debate adjourned.

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