Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, Senator Bernardi and I were invited to speak to the year 12 economics students of Trinity College. I followed Senator Bernardi and was asked a question about the industrial relations laws because, according to the students, Senator Bernardi had again put the point of view that in these times of low unemployment employers are desperate to keep employees and therefore employees are able to negotiate very good workplace arrangements with their employers. The matter of industrial relations and the relationship between employers and employees is consistently stated within the Liberal Party. In a press release from the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, the Hon. Joe Hockey, on 9 July this year titled ‘Minister recognises improvements in work and family balance’ he said:

I encourage businesses to continue to provide more family friendly provisions—with the unemployment rate sitting at 4.2 per cent more businesses are compelled to provide family friendly conditions in order to attract and retain staff.

Family friendly conditions are best negotiated between the employer and employee in the workplace when they are important to the employee.

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More and more employers are offering innovative family friendly conditions, from grandparents’ leave to bonuses and extra flexible hours for Mums returning to work. These initiatives demonstrate the power of the employee in a strong economy.

To the students of Trinity College and to this chamber I will give an example, which occurred in the marginal seat of Wakefield, of where that was absolutely not the case. In June this year we were alerted to the difficulty of a constituent, Mr Trevor Cairns. Last year, Mr Cairns had worked for four weeks for a print and copy centre in the northern suburbs. The arrangement between the employer and Mr Cairns was that there would be a trial period. After that time, at the end of November, Mr Cairns approached the employer to confirm whether his employment would continue. Mr Cairns was informed that the employer was very happy with his work and would be retained as a press operator.

One week later, Mr Cairns approached his employer again. He explained that he was having difficulty with the finishing time as he had a child to pick up from school and asked whether he could change his hours from 7 am to 4 pm to 6.45 am to 3.45 pm, a shift of merely 15 minutes. His employer, according to Mr Cairns, responded quite abruptly that those arrangements did not fall into the parameters of his business. With this, Mr Cairns explained that he felt that he did not think he had a long-term future with the company because of his family obligations. The employer responded with the phrase, ‘When do you want to leave then?’  It was not Mr Cairns’s intention to leave that day, but he was upset with the response he got. So he said that he would like to leave immediately. His employer replied that that was no problem and he could do that. At no time was the subject of notice discussed.

On 8 December 2006, Mr Cairns received a letter from the print and copy centre where he had been working stating that Mr Cairns would not be receiving his last week’s pay as he failed to give notice. It should also be noted that at the beginning of the letter the company stated they were writing to him and had accepted his resignation. Mr Cairns was understandably upset as he would gladly have worked any notice the company had required. He even told the employer he would work the notice but was then told, ‘No, I’ve accepted your resignation effective immediately and I don’t want you back in my factory.’

Mr Cairns then consulted a Legal Services Commission lawyer, who told him that he believed he was entitled to his wages and that there may be potential for one week of pay in lieu of notice. Mr Cairns was not interested in claiming pay for the notice but believed he was entitled to his last week’s pay. He then contacted the Office of Workplace Services, which has now been replaced by the Workplace Authority, and was interviewed by a workplace inspector.

After interviewing both parties, the inspector came to the conclusion that the company was meeting its obligations under the act and the industrial instrument and was unable to sustain his claim. That was where we came in. After reading all the information, we rang the workplace inspector and voiced our concern that an agreement had been reached with the employer making the notice void and that Mr Cairns was entitled to his last week of pay. We asked how Mr Cairns could appeal against the inspector’s decision and were told that there was no avenue of appeal.

But, feeling that Mr Cairns had been wrongly done by, my office contacted Andrew Farrell at the Office of the Employee Ombudsman to ask for his advice. Mr Farrell was happy to speak with Mr Cairns and advise him of his rights. Mr Cairns was guided to the commission and, with the help of Mr Farrell, got a much more satisfactory outcome. I am happy to report that Mr Cairns won his case and the company was ordered to pay his last week’s pay. Although he is very happy with this outcome, of course, Mr Cairns is still very upset that the Office of Workplace Services would not support his claim and wants to know how they decided to support the company when they had access to the same evidence we did.

This is the kind of happy workplace arrangement that we hear about all of the time from the Liberal Party members: the joyous workplace where everyone helps each other and where employers sit down with their employees to work out arrangements that are agreeable to all parties. Those of us out in the real world who are in contact with people who work in jobs where they deal with employers every day know that the kind of job relationships that the Liberal Party ministers and members talk about does not exist. We do get these arbitrary decisions by employers, and so employees need to be protected.

Senator Joyce spoke last night in another discussion about small business not being able to lobby in the same way as large businesses because they simply do not have the time or resources. That is very true, but workers are in a similar situation. Senator Joyce said that because of the position of small business we should do the right thing by them in this chamber. I think we should do the right thing by workers as well. We should give them the proper support and legislation that allows them to have a voice too, which is singularly missing.

In the time since Mr Cairns’s situation, the Office of Workplace Services has been dropped in favour of the Workplace Authority, the fairness test has been introduced and the government has dropped the very name Work Choices. We are not allowed to talk about it any more, apparently. But nevertheless the situation remains. This is what the government has failed to recognise. There are many, many ordinary workers in the very same situation as the one Mr Cairns found himself in. Whether they have the wherewithal to fight it through to the end and get justice as Mr Cairns did is debatable, but what we do know is that the government has not provided Mr Cairns and employees like him with the ability to go up against their employers.

Mr Cairns lives in a marginal seat. Mr David Fawcett, the member for Wakefield, is his local member and voted for the legislation which put Mr Cairns in such a difficult situation. The government was still maintaining as late as July—just a couple of months ago—that there have been improvements in work and family balance as a result of its legislation. I said to the students of Trinity College and I will say to anyone that listens that this is simply not true. There will never be that kind of equality between all employers and employees. We do recognise that some employees have the skill levels that employers need and have a better ability to negotiate their own conditions. We do recognise that there are very good employers who will encourage employees and provide the flexibility and family-friendly environment that we would all like.

But we also know that there are many, many examples of the kind that Mr Cairns encountered, where arbitrary decisions are made by employers. We now know that the mechanisms that the government has put in place to give some protection to those employees are not working. They certainly did not work in Mr Cairns’s case. If Mr Cairns had a union or some other body to represent him, then he would have been able to take that case to the union and be assisted, but instead he had to go through several different organisations. Many a more easily put-off person might have been very much deterred after having gone to the Legal Services Commission and the Office of Workplace Services. Fortunately, he went to his state member, Michael O’Brien, who then referred the matter to my office, where we were able to assist Mr Cairns with redressing this situation.

I hope that we will never again have to sit here in this place and be told the kind of nonsense that the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, put out in his press release about employers now being made to recognise the necessity for work and family balance more. Certainly Mr Hockey is not the only one. In this chamber we have heard Senator Abetz say similar things. An example that I think he used in one instance was in Katanning in Western Australia, where a group of mothers had organised family-friendly hours of work around school times. It is wonderful that that has happened in Katanning. But, if the minister has to go to the small town of Katanning in Western Australia to find an example, then I know that in my electorate of South Australia I will find plenty of examples similar to that of Mr Cairns where it is just not working, as indeed this government is not working. It is well recognised in the polling that is coming out now and in the attitude of many constituents that I have spoken to at doorway and street-corner meetings recently.