The Union Show

Unions have increased their attack on Tony Abbott over industrial relations, accusing him of entering into ”secret deals” with business groups to wind back unfair dismissal laws and reintroduce individual contracts.

Australian Council of Trade Unions chief executive Jeff Lawrence has claimed the Coalition has for months been quietly reassuring business leaders that Labor’s Fair Work Act would be overhauled if it wins the August 21 election – despite opposition claims to the contrary.

”They have explicitly promised to wind back protections from unfair dismissal, reintroduce individual contracts and reduce minimum standards in awards,” Mr Lawrence said.

The move comes as a major study by 30 academics concludes that employers have been the clear winners from a decade and a half of industrial relations changes, including WorkChoices.

The study, co-ordinated by Monash University, has concluded that changes since the Howard government was elected in 1996 have ”contributed to a decisive shift in the balance of power away from employees and institutions protecting them (e.g. tribunals and unions) and towards employers”.

The ACTU has compiled an extensive dossier of quotes from business leaders to make the case that business has a major agenda to ”wind back workers’ rights and hand more power to employers”. It includes demands for lower minimum standards, the removal of redundancy protections, watered down unfair dismissal laws and the reintroduction of individual contracts.

”No doubt big business is expecting a payback from the Liberals if they gain power,” Mr Lawrence said.

Mr Abbott began the election campaign by declaring that WorkChoices was ”dead, buried and cremated”, promising that Labor’s legislation would be left unchanged for three years.

But doubts emerged after opposition industrial relations spokesman Eric Abetz said the Coalition’s policy would involve ”tweaking” the legislation.

The ACTU is claiming that there are 198 ways that the legislation could be watered down through regulations and ministerial powers without actually changing Labor’s legislation.

Amid ongoing concern and a fierce advertising campaign from Labor and unions, the Coalition is expected to release a one-page statement on industrial relations tomorrow reiterating Mr Abbott’s pledge not to change Labor’s Fair Work Act for at least three years.

But the right-wing industrial relations think tank, the HR Nicholls Society, has backed the union claims that major changes to workplace relations could be made without changes to the law.

The Monash report said the industrial relations changes since 1996 had particularly hurt workers with limited bargaining power in low-paid service jobs, as well as young people and workers with English as a second language. These workers had experienced slower wages growth than the national average, bigger workloads and less job security, access to training and flexibility.

Monash professor Richard Mitchell said the study ”unequivocally shows that employers were the clear winners under the Coalition’s employment laws”.

Another contributor to the study from Monash, Dr Anthony Forsyth, said: ”While the Howard government did boost resources devoted to enforcement agencies . . . many long-established employment conditions were eroded during the years of the last federal coalition government.”