This example of an unfair AWA follows a recent admission by the Office of the Employment Advocate that every AWA individual contract registered under the new IR laws has removed at least one award condition and that 64% have removed leave loading; 63% cut penalty rates and overtime; 52% cut shift loadings; and 16% removed ALL protected award conditions. Ms Lorissa Stevens is qualified to drive an excavator, backhoe, bobcat, front-end loader, forklift and heavy rigid vehicle. She recently began work in the Hunter Valley with a contractor in the mining industry and was undergoing induction training when she was asked to sign an AWA individual contract. Ms Stevens was pressured by the company and subsequently dismissed after she baulked at signing the AWA because it contained a clause requiring 12 hours notice of being sick or the loss of a days wages and an extra $200 penalty. Commenting on the AWA sacking, ACTU Secretary Greg Combet said: This is the human face of the Governments IR laws: give up award conditions and sign the contract or lose the job. This is an example of the real world pressure that people are put under to sign AWA individual contracts and give up pay and award conditions under the Governments new IR laws. And this is an experience in the resources sector that the Government is wrongly trying to claim is the great success story of AWA individual contracts. The Governments claims about AWAs are not supported by the facts or the experience of people like Lorissa Stevens. The facts show that productivity growth in resources sectors that rely on union collective agreements has outstripped that of mining sectors dominated by AWA individual contracts. For example, since 1996, annual average productivity per person has grown by 6.6% in the unionised coal industry more than 15 times that of the AWA-dominated iron ore and gold mining sectors in WA, said Mr Combet. More information: * Download below: ABC TV 7.30 Report Transcript - Union seizes on coal worker contract - 3 July 2006