The same employers who helped design the failed IR Omnibus Bill earlier this year, have today called on the Morrison Government to implement the key elements of the deeply unfair and rejected WorkChoices immediately after the upcoming federal election.
In a speech to the ALERA conference, AiGroup have demanded the Government:
- Bring back individual agreements that cut workers’ pay and rights
- Remove most current protections and rights from current awards
- Allow employers to use contracting to avoid the safety net and cut penalty rates
- Remove rights to meal breaks, predictable start and finish times, guaranteed minimum hours and to require workers to work at any work location
Not content with record low wages growth, more than half of Australian workers without full-time permanent work and record low share of GDP, employers are demanding even more.
The Morrison Government needs to empathetically rule out further cuts to workers’ rights and instead commit to increasing them to tackle job insecurity.
Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary Sally McManus:
“The pandemic has demonstrated how insecure work guts the rights of working people and denies basic protections that all working people should be able to rely on – today we have powerful employer groups saying it hasn’t gone far enough.
“This is what the Morrison Government’s most powerful backers want after the next election – stripping away even more rights, making work even more insecure.
“Under this plan, all the central protections for workers rights would be eroded. Employers could create contracts which reduced pay, did not guarantee work and forced working people to live one shift to the next.
“The Prime Minister needs to be honest with Australian workers about whether or not this is the future he wants.”
