But the mooted changes would safeguard penalty rates for nurses, police and other emergency workers.
Advertisement
The mist over the future of penalty rates and deregulation of trading hours on Boxing Day and Easter Sunday will clear on Tuesday when the Productivity Commission releases the findings of its review of the workplace relations framework.
Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris told reporters in Canberra that Australia’s workplace relations system was not systemically dysfunctional.
The way in which members of the Fair Work Commission were appointed should be changed, with the suggestion governments create a panel to select suitable people.
It needed fix, but not replacement, he said.
However, the report said community expectations had changed when it came to retail and hospitality work.
A new class of workplace agreement, called an “enterprise contract”, has been proposed by a review of the nation’s industrial relations system.
“No employee ballot would be required for the adoption of an enterprise contract, nor would any employee group be involved in its preparation and agreement unless the employer wished this to be the case”.
The commission says that the “better off overall test” used in assessing bargaining agreements in comparison with awards can lack flexibility. “As in enterprise agreements, employers and individual employees could still negotiate individual flexibility arrangements as carve outs from the enterprise contract if they mutually agreed”.
He said the enterprise contract would also have a no-disadvantage test.
According to Harris unfair dismissal laws in Australia “have a bad name”.
Mr Smith said his union also feared Prime Minister Tony Abbott will use the Productivity Commission review to cut penalty rates.
Employment Minister Eric Abetz said the draft recommendations are now open for comment before the commission handed down its final report later this year.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said this was “just another trip back to WorkChoices”.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has signalled it will fight any Government attempt to cut penalty rates.
Industrial relations spokesman Adam Bandt said that with high housing costs and slow wages growth young Australians in particular relied on penalty rates to make ends meet.
Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association national secretary Gerard Dwyer told The Australian that “the government agenda is structured to drive down take-home pay”.
The Productivity Commission also said there was evidence “people’s perceptions of their life balance are much the same for those working on Sundays as those doing so on Saturdays”.
Advertisement
Kate Carnell, chief executive officer of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said she was looking forward to meaningful recommendations on the awards system, unfair dismissal, penalty rates and ways to make it easier for small businesses to employ staff. “The Abbott government set up the Productivity Commission inquiry as a platform to cut penalty rates and the minimum wage and swing even more power to the employers – today’s report confirms that”.
