South Australia: Bosses' frenzied campaign

Bob Briton

Employer group Business SA kicked their ongoing industrial 
relations campaign into high gear last week. Half page ads 
appeared in the Monday edition of Murdoch's daily Advertiser 
carrying the crude propagandist image of a medicine bottle 
clearly marked "POISON". The supposedly deadly contents were the 
Industrial Relations Bill (IR Bill) being considered by the Upper 
House of the South Australian Parliament.

The "bitter Bill Parliament could make us all swallow" was the 
Rann Government's Labour Market Relations Bill — a piece of 
legislation viewed as conservative by SA unions that seeks to 
update the 1994 Industrial and Employees Relations Act. Bosses 
are alarmed that the latest Bill would clarify industrial 
relations developments of recent years that have worked 
overwhelmingly in their favour. Employers are outraged that there 
could be a minor pause in the legislative gift-giving season from 
state and federal governments.

The Bill has been watered down a number of times to meet the 
demands coming from the big end of town. There is no move to 
ensure casual workers can become permanent after six months of 
continuous employment — as the United Trades and Labor Council 
very defensively points out. The bosses have retained their 
"right" to spy on workers.

The Bill will, however, afford some minimum wage protection and 
allow for intervention by the Industrial Relations Commission 
where contracts are deemed harsh and unfair. It will better 
protect workers' entitlements, especially those of young, non-
permanent workers. It will ensure that workers contracted from 
labour hire firms do not fall through the cracks of the state's 
unfair dismissal laws. It will preserve unions' right of entry to 
workplaces.

Business SA and other bosses' organisations have been campaigning 
vigorously since the Bill was first drafted in December 2003. 
They hired pro-boss outfit Access Economics to argue that 1700 
jobs will go if the Bill were enacted. Their reading of the Bill 
would have it that unionists could demand to enter a boss' home 
to examine a business' most sensitive documents. And pigs might 
fly! The Master Builders put it about that 3500 apprenticeships 
would be under threat.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) submitted 
a tendentious document to the government in March in which it 
clearly threatened that more and more bosses would remove their 
workers from the state's jurisdiction and put them into federally 
administered Australian Workplace Agreements. As the submission 
pointed out, about half of SA's workers are already under federal 
IR control. It makes flattering reference to Victoria's 
abdication of its IR system to the Commonwealth. ACCI insists 
that the state should remain "neutral" on whether workers are 
casuals or permanent or hired as contractors. Like the various 
spokespersons for the Federal Government, the bosses' 
organisation insists that all of the employees working under 
these arrangements are doing so out of their own free will. The 
gloves come off when questions of job security are raised:

"Whilst academics and theoreticians might like to think that a 
workplace can be micro managed by legislation and that the law 
can create employment security, the real world of workplace 
relations and business activity is quite different."

The "real world" the ACCI wants us all to accept is that of the 
master/servant relationship in every workplace in the state.

The ACCI document goes to great lengths in complaining how the 
legislation could allow a contracted worker to be considered an 
employee for purposes such as unfair dismissal. It is revealing 
that it uses terms like "genuine independent contractors" — 
inadvertently conceding that at least some workers are forced to 
become contractors as a means of avoiding employer 
responsibilities and cheating workers. The whole Bill was written 
off as "policy adventurism". In common with Business SA, ACCI is 
not interested in further negotiation on the matters and simply 
wants the Bill withdrawn.

Fortunately, independent Bob Such and Greens MHA Kris Hanna saw 
to it that the Bill passed through the lower house. Maximum 
pressure is now on the Democrats, No Pokies MLC Nick Xenophon, 
independent Terry Cameron and Family First's Andrew Evans. It is 
obvious that great hope has been placed in the last-mentioned 
fundamentalist councillor. Business SA's pricey ad in the 
Advertiser last week told us that the IR Bill is "bad for 
business, bad for families and bad for jobs" [emphasis added]. SA 
bosses are not known for their subtlety.