Skip to content.

National Union of Workers

 

Press Release

ACTU Media Release - Liberals must accept responsibility for ‘WorkChoices’ disaster: new figures on AWAs

Tuesday December 11, 2007

ACTU President Sharan Burrow
ACTU President Sharan Burrow

Liberal leader Brendan Nelson and Shadow Minister for Workplace Relations Julie Bishop must accept that WorkChoices was a disaster with new figures from the Workplace Authority showing the so-called Fairness Test and AWA/Individual Contracts are continuing to fail thousands of workers.

These new figures from the Workplace Authority show that employers have been rushing to try and push workers onto unfair AWA/Individual Contracts with a jump of almost 40,000 new AWAs lodged in the November — around 10,000 or 34 per cent more AWAs than were lodged in October.

The data also shows a huge rise in the number of workers whose workplace agreements have failed the Fairness Test.

In the past month, the number of agreements failing the Fairness Test has more than tripled, with almost 5,000 workers found to have had their wages and conditions cut without adequate compensation.

The figures also show another rise in the massive backlog of workers waiting for their wages and conditions to be checked with now almost 150,000 workers in the queue to have their job contracts scrutinised.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:

“The figures show some employers are clearly doing the wrong thing and are continuing to push their workers onto AWAs which take away their rights and conditions.

“WorkChoices and the ‘Fairness Test’ IR changes that the Liberals introduced have been a total disaster. It is very disappointing to see employers are still trying to push workers onto unfair AWAs.

“The fact that there is such a large amount of AWAs failing the Fairness Test indicates just how bad things are for workers on AWAs.

“These figures show that all the millions of dollars that was spent trying to inform employers and the public about WorkChoices was a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.

“The Australian public completely and utterly rejected WorkChoices and AWAs in the election and yet the Liberals and sections of big business still haven’t got the message.

“It is time for the Liberals and business groups including ACCI to stop using AWAs to take away workers’ rights,” Burrow said.


Last modified 2007-12-11 11:22 AM
 
Powered by Plone    This site conforms to the following standards: