Employment Relation Issues - Essay Example

Employment Relation Name: Institution: Work choice is a trade agreement in Australia that was first introduced in 2005. It was as the result of the amendment of workplace relations act 1996. It was made into effect on 2005. It is known to advocate for the changes of the nature of work and employment in Australia. This was under the Howard government when this agreement was effected. Not long, it was criticized leading to it being amended and several changes were done to it. Later it was replaced by fair work commission that was effected under the government of Rudd. The criticism was a result of Australians saying that the agreement was violating many of the fundamental employee rights. Through media, Australian council of trade unions tried even to attack the new laws through advertisements on televisions. . (Jeremy 2009) On the other hand, Fair Work Commission (FWC) is also Australian industrial relations that were created in 2009. It was created by fair work act by the Rudd Government. Its main aim was to bring reformation in industrial relations. It was to replace the oppressing work choice that had tortured workers for long. This was shortly after its criticism begun. Always there has been animosity between trade unions, which protect the right of workers and businesses. But now trade workers have been seeing unions as holding them up from getting on with the job. That is why the Rudd government was determined to bring changes to the work choice. Some of its functions included setting modern rewards, settling dispute among workers, setting minimum wage and was also concerned about handling claims for unfair dismissal. It was then succeeded by the Australian industrial relations commission. . (Jeremy 2009) The government had keenly noted that there was an economic growth since the beginning of the amendment of work place act in 1996. Before that, there were other trade agreements that were operational in Australia too. They were either formal or informal. These agreements were known to be the pivot to the operation of industrial relations. The reality of these work choices was to attempt to put off the power of trade unions to reduce their influence. This work choice gave employers the power to sack workers with little or no restriction or accountability. Australian Workplace Agreements enabled employers to create individual employee contracts, and gave employees less bargaining power in terms of pay, hours and dismissal. This formed one of its main criticisms. It was a rule that was so unfair to workers since some workers were sacked and others their salaries was cut and working hours too was reduced with no compensation. This did not have a positive impact to the workers and indeed it brought the major crisis hence its criticism started. This was according to the residents of Australia who had complained about the work choice for a long time. (Cooper 2009) Work choice was introduced during the ruling of the Howard government aiming to bring improvements in employment levels and national economic performance. This was to be achieved by ensuring that unfair dismissal laws for companies under a certain size are dispensed well. The Howard government at that time thought that the main aim of these workplace relations was to provide an interface where employment could be negotiated through agreements. They found out that this system would be the genuine and safer after the amendment. This made Australia a country that does not allow workers to bargain collectively. Various changes were noted here after this work choice was made to be effective. There are a number of changes that were allowed to be done hoping that there will be improvement in these relations. Howard government did some of these changes to make work choice more appealing but later it was ironical after workers and mostly employees viewed in the eye of oppressing laws. Now that it was seen as the main pillar to support the economic relation and the bargaining of the employment in Australia. Little did he know that he was creating the basis of the conflict of the work choice. People now saw that this agreement was so burden to them and noted that it was so demanding and costly to them. Some of the changes brought to the work choices were the ones that lead to the emergence of fair work act. These changes include; Fair Pay Commission that was set to establish as well as regulating the minimum pay and conditions in Australia. This would set standards that of payment in every worker in Australia. This allowed all employees to have a common bargaining front and would get rewards collectively through agreements. This was to be done through fair pay and conditions standards. Then there was another change that leads to the establishment of no disadvantage test. This was to ensure that all individual conditions and terms of employment could be lower than the corresponding awards. This was not to mean that the agreement could reduce the standards by any chance. They were to bring a nice bargaining platform for the terms that a worker should be subjected to if given any kind of job in Australia. This could lead to a fair treatment to all workers as they try to bridge the gap that was between employee and employers. This was thought to lead to fair terms of employment and facilitate efficiency on these relations. ( Marris 2007) Then there was a way to safeguard this new condition of test introduced soon. It was noted that there was no safety net to make sure that all employees were safe and better off under these new conditions. The safety was known as fairness test which ensured that the workplace agreements would provide fair compensation in case of any violation of the condition by the employer. This was contained in the workplace relations amendment bill 2007. This change aimed to bring equity to the employees and their conditions of work in general. The journey to bring more change to the work choices did not cease. More and more pressures were still applied to the move all aimed to bring changes on work choices. More way forward that could advocate for fairness was still on the move. This was done by the amendment of the workplace relation amendment act 1996. Some of the changes done were; prevent making of the new AWAs and to undertake the process of award modernization was made to be enabled by AIRC. Also employers who were using AWAs were to individual transitional employment agreement within the transitional period. This would rather bring attention to employees as individuals in the eyes of employer. This would be more appealing to employees than before. This did not come that easy. It was presented to the parliament by Rudd and it was passed and in 2008 it was brought into effect. It was really fought for. Then the move that followed was to abolish the AWAs. This meant that it was not allowed to for new AWAs to be made from the date of commencement. And if any AWAs were made during this period or before, it was to continue to operate until terminated or replaced. (Cooper 2009) Then the transition act created another agreement that aimed at providing employees with AWAs with time to convert this new system. It was called individual transitional employment agreements (ITEAs). They were only available to employers who had at least one on AWAs as first December 2007 and it was to be used to employ new employees or the existing but now who were employed on AWAs. ( Marris 2007) The same transition act terminated the rationale in the award process by the work choices. It was claimed that they had failed Australian’s award system for a long time. The AIRC was directed to create new and modern awards during the transition period. This was ready to be commenced on 2010 January 1st. it was further directed that during the creation of these new awards, they should reduce the total number of awards which are operational in Australia. This what they termed as modernization of awards which contained ten matters and more so provided many of the industries with relevant details and information about national employment standards. These matters included; type of work that was performed, overtime rates, penalty rates, minimum wages among others. These new modern awards were created primarily along industry lines. Although the AIRC was thought to have also created awards along operational lines if appropriate measures were to be taken. Then it was after all these changes that the work choice blended the fair work act. It was more preferable as we shall see later. ( Marris 2007) Fair work choice was made to replace the work choice as it was seen to be oppressing to workers. The change was more political since Rudd had vowed to abolish it when he immediately gets to power. He made it as one of main agendas in his campaign and gave him victory. Immediately coming to power is now when he started to bring these changes. This replacement targeted the re-introduction of new legislations that dealt with unfair dismissal laws. It also aimed at bringing other new bargaining rules and aiming to abandon the ones in the work choice. People were for the change of the work choice since they had long lost confidence in them. This was the evolution of the fair work act. Many changes to agreement relations were noted here. (Jeremy 2009) Now there was a collective bargaining and agreements that were formed. These were directly coined from workplace relations system. There was an overall name given to these agreements that provided a number of forms of collective agreement. They were called enterprise agreements. They meant that there was no distinction between union and non-union agreements made under this act. These enterprise agreements included; single interest employer, single business, Greenfields, low-paid multi-employer and voluntary-multi-employer agreements. These were all under the fair work act. This act also advocated for the change of bargaining representation. Then there were several changes that were advocated on how to represent a bargain. Several measures were taken to bring these changes. For example the employees and employers were made to feel free to when choosing who to represent them in a collective bargaining. There was also a right given to the union of members that were represented by relevant unions. Then fair work act determined that the majority of employees should support collective bargain in good faith. These are just a few of them; they were all aiming at bringing an effect to fair work act. (Cooper 2009) Then national employment standards (NES) were set too as one of the key elements in the fair work act. This was not in the previous work choice. Indeed under the work choice there were AFPCS which closely resembled the NES. Here on the fair work act the NES did not contain minimum wages. Some of the standards set here were; there were public holidays set, maximum hours of work one should work, annual leave and other relevant leaves and then fair work information statement. Then under the fair work act there was proposed safety net that underpins employment and collective bargaining. There was also a proposed safety that were stated as the legislated NES as outlined above and the ten minimum employment standards that were included in the awards. ( Marris 2007) Work choice was in use when there was coalition government in 2007. Then there was a move to remove the unfair dismissal provisions under work choices and legislation that allowed workplaces to be ruined by enforced union membership. Work choices were criticized immediately when Rudd came into power. It was then proposed some amendments be done on the work choices. This is how the fair work act was formed. That is from the amended work choice. Fair work act from then has been seen union increasing wages for the workers. And the cost of living was noted to increase significantly after its introduction. The act also lowered cases of unemployment as more companies were encouraged to create job for the workers. The work choice was seen as a bullying laws that why it was amended.( Ellem 2009) References Frino. 2009. Paid maternity and paternity leave and the emergence of ‘Equality bargaining’ in Australia: Australia: Australian Bulletin Press. Ellem. 2009. Fair Work and the Re-regulation of Collective Bargaining. Australia: Australia Press. Sheldon. 2008. What collective bargaining future for Australia? Lessons from international experience. Australia: Australian Bulletin Press Cooper. 2009. The 'New' Industrial Relations and International Economic Crisis: Australia: Australia Press. Marris. 2007. Work Choices. The Australian. Australia: AustraliaPress. Andra . 2007. Unpopular Work Choices brand dumped . The Age (Melbourne). Washington: Washington University Press. Kate. 2008. Bell tolls for Howard's Work Choices In The Canberra Times. Canberra: Canberra Press. Williamson. 2009. Women, Work and Industrial Relations in 2008. Washington: Washington University Press. Jeremy. 2009. Unions welcome new Fair Work act. Canberra: Canberra Press. Baird. 2009. Paid maternity and paternity leave and the emergence of ‘Equality bargaining’ in Australia: Australia: Australian Bulletin Press Read More