ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is sitting in Geneva, Switzerland, today to hear a complaint about the Australian Government's current workplace laws and whether they breach international human rights obligations.

The ILO Committee on the Freedom of Association will hear the complaint with the findings of the Committee due to be considered by the ILO's Governing Body meeting next week.

The ILO has already strongly criticised the Australian Government, when in June this year, the ILO's special Committee on the Application of Standards found the Government was not meeting its international obligations to protect the rights of workers to collective bargaining. (See below:)

To date, the ILO has only examined existing Australian workplace laws, but even these have been found wanting.

The ACTU believes the new WorkChoices legislation introduced into Parliament this week will worsen the human rights situation for Australian workers with many legitimate union activities to be made illegal by the new laws.

Under the Governments proposed laws, union officials and employees will be fined up to $33,000 simply for asking an employer to include in an enterprise agreement provision for:

• Protection from unfair dismissal
• Union involvement in dispute resolution
• Allowing employees to attend trade union training
• Committing the employer to future collective bargaining
• Protecting job security in the event that people are replaced by labour hire or contractors
• Any other claim the Minister decides should be illegal.

Thats $33,000 for each and any of these offences.

In the building and construction industry workers face six months jail if they refuse to attend a secret interrogation, if they refuse to answer questions even though it may incriminate them, or if they refuse to hand over documents.

And this is not because of suspected terrorist activity. These criminal penalties can arise because of legitimate union activity such as the defence of job security for workers.

The Governments new workplace laws will deny workers the right to organise, the right to strike and the right to collectively bargain.

These are horror laws that breach fundamental and internationally accepted standards for employee rights.

More information

ILO COMMITTEE CARPETS AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT JUNE 2005

Provisional Record - Report of the Committee on the Application of Standards[extract], International Labour Conference, Ninety-third Session, Geneva, 2005.
Source: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc93/pdf/pr-22-2.pdf

The Committee recalled that the Committee of Experts had been making comments for several years on certain provisions of the Workplace Relations Act, particularly in relation to the exclusion from the scope of application of the Act of certain categories of workers, the limitations on the scope of union activities covered by protection against anti-union discrimination and the relationship between individual contracts and collective agreements.

The Committee requested the Government to provide a detailed report to the Committee of Experts on all elements relating to the application of the Convention, in both law and practice, including the discussion held in the present Committee, taking into account all matters relating to the impact of the legislation on the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, and the measures adopted or envisaged by the Government. The Committee also requested the Government to provide copies of all draft laws that might relate to the application of the Convention. The Committee requested the Committee of Experts to examine the elements of the debate on this case. The Government should consider requesting the advice of the Office in this respect.