More evidence AWAs are cutting pay and conditions for Australian working families

Media Release - April 17, 2007

Details of a secret Government report revealed in today’s newspapers confirm that AWA individual contracts registered under the Federal Government’s new IR laws are cutting the pay and conditions of Australian workers at an alarming rate says the ACTU.

Secret figures that the Howard Government has previously refused to release and are reported in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers show:

Almost half (45%) of AWA individual contracts abolish all of the award conditions that the Federal Government spent $55 million on TV advertising to claim would be ‘protected by law’.

A third of the AWA individual contracts registered under the new laws over a six month period provide no pay rise for the life of the contract – some for up to five years.

Award conditions were abolished from the vast majority of the AWA individual contracts examined, including overtime pay (cut in 52% of AWAs), penalty rates (68%), shift loadings (76%), annual leave loading (59%), incentive payments and bonuses (70%), declared public holidays (22.5%), allowances for expenses, skills or disabilities (57%), rest breaks (30%).

Staff at the Office of the Employment Advocate (OEA) believe that more than one in four (27.8%) of the AWA individual contracts they examined may have broken the law by undercutting one of the minimum legal employment conditions.

Other official Government data shows that more than 1,000 Australian workers are being put onto AWA individual contracts every day under the new IR laws – with 94,513 new AWAs registered in the three months to March 2007 and 306,393 in the 12 months to the end of March 2007.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said: “This is the truth about the IR laws that the Howard Government has tried to hide from the Australian public.

These secret figures show that the new IR laws are being used to erode the pay and conditions of thousands of workers.

It is no wonder that many working families are struggling to keep their heads above water as a result of the new IR laws.

These figures also raise the serious question of whether the thousands of AWA individual contracts that OEA staff believe may have broken the law by undercutting the minimum legal employment conditions have been investigated and rectified,” said Ms Burrow.

The ACTU Network

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