The unfairness of Work Choices is well known. Along with taking away many workers’ rights, Howard has also unfairly removed our limited legal right to strike. Howard’s spin ‘We won’t remove the right to strike’ tries to hide the repressive changes. Work Choices makes legitimate union industrial action ‘unlawful’. Striking workers protesting for their legitimate workplace and economic interests risk new penal powers. The strategy to legally suppress strikes is back. It is first used against building and construction workers.

These 9 further limits on the right to strike are not warranted and most unfair. Below is brief discription.

1. Minister Andrews has unprecedented power to intervene to halt any strike.
   
   
2. Compulsory, complex, secret ballots have now to be conducted before taking lawful protected action.
   
   
3. New provisions outlaw basic union rights for industrial action for industry or pattern bargaining.
   
   
4. One amendment, with wide ramifications, allows third persons affected directly or indirectly by industrial action (other than the employer and union in dispute) to halt protected legal strikes.
   
   
5. Unions pursue claims to encourage unionism and many employers agree. Unbelievably in a system based on ‘voluntary agreement’, employers and workers are now banned from reaching agreement on such claims, called ‘prohibitive content’.
   
6. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission, has more powers to halt industrial action ‘not protected’. The AIRC ‘must’ stop strikes. Employers can easily get their law firms to apply to the AIRC for orders and courts for labour injunctions to halt a strike.
   
   
7. The formerly limited right to protected action for enterprise bargaining is narrowed. Many exceptions are listed. Any other industrial action that is not protected will be penalisable.
   
   
8. Work Choices repeals the section for the AIRC to settle a dispute before employers can take common law action for damages.
   
   
9. Legitimate political protests and environmental actions such as green bans are at risk. OHS action is legally more complex. A strike is not lawful if (inadvertently) a non-unionist is involved.

More detail: Chris White Howard removes the right to strike 2 page pdf document

Chris White is researching labour law whitecd@velocitynet.com.au
References www.jape.org | Evatt Foundation http://evatt.org.au/news/336.html

The following motion was passed at a public protested meeting against Howard's IR laws.


1. Urges the Moreland City Council to reject the executive recommendation that the preferred tenderer be selected to operate the Coburg Leisure Complex.

2. Urges the that Moreland City Council enters into negotiations with the Australian Services Union over a mechanism to bring the Coburg Leisure Centre back "in-house".

more info: Comminity Pressure on Moreland City Council

On May 9 SBS Insight program ran an excellent debate about the negative effects of WorkChoices.

Intro:
It is now six weeks since the Federal Government's new workplace laws came into effect and already there've been reports of workers being sacked or demoted unfairly. The Government says these are just teething problems and the workplace changes are long overdue. The government is predicting increased productivity and more jobs. While the unions are furious, employers are relieved they can sack unproductive workers more easily. But there's uncertainty over key elements of the laws.
full transcript

ACTU Media Release 08 May 2006
The ACTU has accused the Howard Government of being too focussed on the needs of high income earners and big corporations and is calling on the Government to give far greater priority to easing the pressure on working families in tomorrow's Federal Budget.

John Howard and Peter Costello's economic management may be keeping corporate profits and share prices at record highs but the household budgets of working families are under more pressure than ever the ACTU said today.

Releasing previously unpublished data from the ABS Household Expenditure Surveys in 1999 and 2004 today, ACTU President Sharan Burrow said today:

"On top of the Government's new IR laws which undermine job security and put downward pressure on worker's wages and conditions, previously unpublished data from the ABS shows that housing and transport have overtaken food as the highest cost budget items for Australian working families. This is even before recent interest rate rises & spiralling petrol prices.

ABS data shows that average working families on incomes up to $80,000 a year are now typically spending half their income on just four main items: housing, transport, food and medical expenses. It shows:

* The cost of housing ($153 a week) and transport ($145 a week) has overtaken the cost of food ($143 a week) in the weekly budgets of low and middle-income working families. Five years ago food was the
major cost item for low and middle-income working families with transport costs second and housing further down the list in weekly budgets...

more info: http://www.actu.asn.au/work_rights/news/1147048282_23955.html

Editorial: Contract With Australia
If WorkChoices is the legislative expression of the Howard Government's ideological hatred of unions, the Independent Contractors Act is the product of an altogether more dangerous form of ideological zealotry.

These laws will risk going under the radar because, by their nature they are so complex as to induce slumber in even the keenest student of industrial relations. But seasoned observers warn their impact could be even more profound than WorkChoices.

So what is being proposed? Couched in the language of 'freedom' and choice' these laws are designed to break the link between labour law and contractors. It is this link that has provided a modicum of protection for workers forced from secure jobs onto sham contract arrangements in recent years.

By allowing contractors who are dependent on a single business for work to be 'deemed' as employees, industrial tribunals have ensured these workers have had access to superannuation, workers compensation andsome legal recourse when treated unfairly.

All this will end under the ICA, due into Federal Parliament this session. Industrial tribunals lose the right to 'deem' contractors as employees and the unfair contracts jurisdiction is abolished, meaning any disputes have to go through the altogether more expensive avenues of Supreme Court action.

The laws also continue the attack on unions. If you are contractor you will have no 'choice' about being represented by a trade union innegotiating a contract. You will be truly on your own...

more: http://workers.labor.net.au/305/editorial_editorial.html

ACTU Media Release 04 May 2006
The Howard Government's proposed new "Independent Contractors" law will further undermine the job security of working Australians by making it easier for big businesses to replace existing workers with so-calledindependent contractors says the ACTU.

Commenting on the Government's announcement that it plans to introduce a new law to promote independent contracting next month, ACTU PresidentSharan Burrow said:

"The 'Independent Contractors Act' is the Howard Govt's next industrial relations onslaught. Already we have seen the WorkChoices IR laws make it easier for employers to sack their permanent staff and re-employ them as casuals or on contracts with lower wages and conditions.

The Government now proposes to take this a step further with a new law that will allow more employers to avoid responsibility for paying superannuation, workers compensation, annual leave and other basic entitlements to people who are called 'contractors' but are essentially employees."...more