I want to start with a quote.

“Australia is a country in which we define ourselves through our work. Within minutes of meeting one another the question is asked: “What sort of work do you do?”. Work puts us in a social context, defines the framework of our lives and gives each of us a sense of balance and meaningful purpose.

Being without a job devastates not only personal finances, it exacts a heavy social and human toll. Albert Camus said “Without work all life goes rotten”.

Losing your job after two or three decades of continuous work is a major life event. It can be as devastating for some as the loss of a limb – or even a family member.

Employers must take seriously the need to manage redundancy...in an orderly and humane way. The displacement of employees is handled well by some employers but appallingly by others. The long-term consequences are devastating for the individual and ultimately, significant for the public purse.”

So wrote Brendan Nelson in his foreword to the parliamentary Committee report “Age Counts – an inquiry into issues specific to mature age workers”. Now the report and the foreword obviously have age specific issues as their focus but the extract from the foreword I’ve just quoted isolates pretty well the underpinnings of this case.

What this case seeks to do is improve the way we deal with redundancy for award covered workers.

This case is about saying that we can do a bit better for employees who are made redundant.

Its about saying that after 19 years we can improve on the existing Federal standard.

For permanent employees in larger businesses it says we can more adequately compensate the losses which they are likely to suffer on redundancy. The standard we seek is modest. We’re not talking about a BHP multi-million dollar CEO goodbye kiss for a lousy job here. We’re talking about a minimum standard that’s been in place in NSW for 9 years. A standard that’s less than the public sector standard and less than the level of severance many in the community are entitled to under agreements.

The standard we seek won’t compensate most employees for all of the losses they suffer but it will do a better job than the existing standard.

For small business employees this case will end nearly twenty years of discriminatory and arbitrary treatment that has effectively denied most small business employees severance pay at all.

For casual employees this claim recognises that after 12 months of service a casual employee is casual in name only. As the unfair dismissal legislation and parental leave standards now recognise after 12 months of service all employees regardless of their designation as permanent or casual, deserve security in their employment. As a result, we say long term casuals should be compensated for the loss of that security when they are made redundant.

I’ll spend quite a bit more time later in opening on each of the elements of our claim but that’s our case in a nutshell.

In opposition the employer groups and the Commonwealth say lots of things but mainly they say this:

• Economic mayhem will flow from our claim
• That jobs will be lost, businesses will go to the wall and that innovation and restructuring will be seriously impeded.

In this respect the employers and the Commonwealth are a bit like one of those doomsday cults:

• They keep predicting the end of the world but then when it doesn’t happen they just go right on to the next prediction;
• They predicted the end of the world in 1984 when the original termination, change and redundancy standard was introduced;
• They predicted the end of the world or at least NSW in 1994 when the standard we seek in this case was introduced for state award employees in that state;
• They no doubt predicted the demise of small business in South Australia in 1987 when the State Commission declined to exempt businesses with less than 15 employees from the obligation to pay severance pay in that State;
• And as a number of members of the Bench will know they constantly predict disaster as a result of safety net adjustments.

But just as with the doomsday cults the relevant event never leads to the end of the world.

When you hear the employer and Commonwealth evidence and argument in this case just bear in mind that for their fundamental propositions to be accepted the Commission would have to deny the reality of experience:

• The experience of what actually happened in 1984
• The experience of what actually happened in NSW in 1994
• The experience of what actually happened in SA in 1987;
• The experience of what has actually happened as a result of every wage case since 1996.

The ACTU claim will add less than 0.1% to the total wages bill:

• 0.09% is our costing for Federal award employees;
• properly analysed the Commonwealth materials confirm the veracity of that costing;
• in addition there is an independent verification in the report of the National Institute for Economic and Industrial Research which says the cost of introducing our standard across Australia ie not just for Federal award employees is 0.12%

In other words whichever way you cut it this claim has a negligible macroeconomic impact and just as with those other events which were in the submissions of employers meant to spell the end of the world if our claim is granted employees who are made redundant will be a little better off and no adverse economic consequences will follow.

This claim is about saying that after - 11 years of unprecedented economic growth and labour productivity performance, we can do a bit better for people who face “the major life event”, as Dr Nelson described it, of losing their job through redundancy.

We can do that without venturing into unchartered waters but by adopting standards that, for the most part already exist for many employees in Australia and we can do it without adverse economic consequences.

Opening Address by Andrew Watson
ACTU Senior Industrial Officer
ACTU Redundancy Test Case
Australian Industrial Relations Commission
May 26, 2003

Read the ACTU’s Media Release -ACTU Test Case To End Redundancy Discrimination.