The Guardian 7 June, 2006
AWAs — Howard’s lies exposed
Employers slash "protected conditions"
John Howard’s workplace point-man is green-lighting AWAs that deny Australian workers overtime, penalty rates and public holidays, sight unseen. Employment Advocate, Peter McIlwain, told a Senate Estimates Committee he had registered more than 6000 individual contracts, in the first month of WorkChoices, without checking their content.
The confession came in the wake of McIlwain’s Office refusing to register a collective agreement, negotiated by the CFMEU and a Queensland coal company, because it contained time off to attend union health and safety training.
McIlwain told Senators the rules for employer-driven AWAs were different.
He said he did not check AWAs to ensure they met new Fair Pay minimums.
"I stick to the functions I have been given by the parliament", he said.
Once registered, without being checked, he said, AWAs would be "operational" whether they met minimum standards or not.
McIlwain told the Senate Committee his Office had "analysed" 250 of the 6263 individual contracts it had registered.
That analysis showed that not a single agreement included all of the so-called "protected award conditions" touted by the Federal Government in its $55 million WorkChoices advertising blitz.
McIlwain said:
64 percent of AWAs removed leave loadings
63 percent did away with penalty rates
52 percent removed shift work loadings
16 percent excluded all "protected award conditions"
The Employment Advocate revealed that declared public holidays had disappeared from some AWAs, and others had pared back annual holidays to less than two weeks a year.
"Protected", apparently, can become unprotected with a stroke of an employer’s pen.
McIlwain admitted that a "single clause" in an AWA was sufficient to remove entitlements to all "protected" award conditions.
The revelations are a serious blow to the Prime Minister’s credibility although no surprise to anyone who had read the small print in the government’s material: "These entitlements [the protected award conditions] in a new agreement can only be modified or removed by specific provisions in that new agreement with the approval of employees."
Yet John Howard personally aligned himself with last year’s television, radio and newspaper campaign that assured Australians’ core conditions would be "protected by law".
The lie "protected by law" was stamped in red across the covers of millions of copies of WorkChoices booklets.
The wall-to-wall advertising offensive was launched to counter union claims that workers would lose holidays, penalty rates and other basic award conditions, under Howard’s legislation. And the government’s own man, McIlwain has confirmed the worst fears of the unions.