TRANSCRIPT: DOORSTOP - CANBERRA - DEC 7, 2020

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
MONDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2020

SUBJECT: Government’s attack on casual workers.

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: I'll start by saying don't believe the spin that you'll see in the papers today from the government. Don't buy the government's spin on what they're doing with industrial relations with today's announcement. We don't have the full legislation yet but there's a few things we do know from what the government’s announced today. Today is one of the biggest gaps you'll ever see between announcement and delivery. The government announces as though they're helping casuals – what they're actually doing is taking rights away from casuals. That's what today's announcement is. Today's announcement says the rights that casuals have won over the last couple of years in the courts will be taken away by legislation to be introduced to this parliament. At the end of this casuals will have fewer rights. And what's worse, employers who break the law will no longer suffer a penalty. So up until now, it's been the case that if an employer abuses the rights of a casual worker, effectively only gives someone the security, the insecurity of casual work, but expects permanent hours from them, then the employer has double dipped by doing that, would have to if you want to take both benefits, you’ve got to pay both entitlements. And that's effectively been where the laws been at. What the government's proposing today is this: if an employer breaks the law they get away with it in full for the first 12 months. And after a year, the worker is allowed to say “please stop breaking the law”. And the employer is allowed to say “no”. On the basis we're not sure if your job will still be there in a year. And that's it, nothing happens. So casuals lose their rights and employers walk away without any penalty. The definition of what it is to be a casual has been around and fought for through the courts for many, many years. The concept of defining that is not unreasonable - although exactly where they're drawing the lines on that definition is something that we're going to work through when we see the detail. But the big change that we do know the government is proposing today is casuals lose rights and employers who breach those rights, what few rights are left, walk away without any penalty at all. An employer will be allowed to abuse the rights of casuals for a full 12 months before they even have the right to ask “can you please stop doing that?” And after a year if the employer says “no I'm not sure if you’ll still have a job in a year” – then the employer gets a tick to continue breaking the law and abusing the rights of a casual worker. If someone has permanent hours and a permanent job, they should be given the protection of permanent employment. Coming out of the pandemic if there's one thing Australia needs it's to have more people in secure work. Today's announcement is a direct attack on job security.

JOURNALIST: What rights will workers lose?

BURKE: The right the casuals have at the moment is if they are being abused as casuals, if they are in fact being employed as permanents, then they are able to go through a process and get an entitlement to life. So if the employer is only giving them the insecurity of casuals, but you look at the commitments that are being made in terms of future hours, you look at the roster that's being worked, and they're really full-time or part-time employees, then they have a pathway to be able to access their leave. All of that leave disappears with the stroke of pain if the government gets this legislation through. All those entitlements for casuals, gone. But if an employer breaks the law, if an employer put someone on as a casual, even though they're giving them a permanent roster and expecting them to work as a permanent, the only penalty that happens is the employer will have to put up with after 12 months the employer saying “please can you stop doing that?” And that's it.

JOURNALIST: Isn't the point of this legislation to clear up exactly what a casual is? So we don't get employers who prior to that Workpac decision I think it was, were quite confused, or some of them were confused, by what a casual is, leading to these situations where we had court battles that resulted in this episode. Isn’t this going to give clarity to employers so they won't be breaching the law?

BURKE: Oh, it'll give clarity that you can treat people however you want and there's no penalty. That's the clarity this will give employers. And if you want people to have some confidence to start spending money in the economy, you want to give people secure jobs. What this does is, it says to employers you can get away with giving people insecure work, there will be no penalty. You can give them insecure work and expect for yourself permanent hours, and you'll get away with it. That's what the government's proposing. There's great spin around it. And if you look at the announcement you'd think they were making things better for casuals. All they are doing is removing a right for casuals if they've been exploited and if the definition of casual worker has been abused, that right gets removed. And in its place a right after 12 months to say, “please, can you fix this” with the employer having the right to say “no”.

JOURNALIST: Does the government have a point when it says that casuals shouldn't be able to get the 25 per cent loading on top of their normal wage and get the benefits of being a permanent employee provided they're not being abused in that situation.

BURKE: If you're referring to the Workpac decision there. Really limited decision in its definition, really limited. Some people, it has suited them to try to pretend this applies to every casual. It doesn't. But let me give you the Workpac example. The casual was employed by a labour hire company. Permanent workers employed by the company doing the exact same job were on a higher hourly rate than the casual. So this argument that somehow the employer had already paid the loading, because of the labour hire rort that was going on in that mine, you had a situation where the casual was being paid less than the permanent workforce they were working side by side with. So for anyone to claim the employer had gone through a hardship of paying a loading - no, they were paying less for the casual than they were for the permanent.

JOURNALIST: You're signalling I guess Labor is up for a fight on this. What's your parliamentary strategy on this going for? What are you gonna do?

BURKE: Our parliamentary strategy for the whole year has been really simple, which has been to say in that where it's in the national interest to cooperate, we want to cooperate. I even said in Parliament House only last week, that we were hoping that the government would bring forward legislation based on a consensus from those working groups that took place. And I expected it would go relatively quickly through the parliament. Well, what they've announced today is anything but consensus. What they've announced today is removing the rights of workers and making insecure work worse. That's what they've announced. And it doesn't matter which way you spin it. You look at the detail of what they've said - at the end of that legislation being passed casuals would have fewer rights and there would be no penalty on employers who had broken the law.

JOURNALIST: Will you oppose it or support it in the Senate?

BURKE: Well, you were talking about legislation I haven't seen. So I can only go through what we've seen. And what we've seen today is removing security of employment. And let me say I set one simple test for the government with this legislation. We will support legislation and our test for legislation will be: does it create jobs with decent pay and secure work? At the moment from what we've seen from the government, that's a fail.

JOURNALIST: Are you concerned this was put up in the last week of parliament, a lot of other things already on the bill to kid of rush this through?

BURKE: I don't see how they could rush something like this through this week. They don't get to introduce it till Wednesday. And this is one where if you look at how easy it's been for them to spin the initial announcement, we are going to require a long period of inquiry to work through the detail so that people can in fact see the difference between the government's announcement and what they are planning to deliver.

JOURNALIST: The government argues in terms of the definition of a casual that the business community wanted a much broader or sorry, much more narrow definition, the union movement wanted a broader definition. And it's met them halfway in the middle and got the consensus view. Surely there's a point there isn’t there?

BURKE: But the real test here isn’t the definition. It's what happens if it's breached. And under what the government's announced today if that definition of a casual - wherever you land it - is breached, there's no penalty. All that happens is the employee gets away with it for the first 12 months and after a year, the employee can say “boss, can you please can you please stop breaking the law? Because you you're not meeting the correct definition.” And if the employer says yes, they get away with the first year. But the employer can still say “no”. They can still say “no I want to keep breaking the law. I want to keep doing it this way. I don't care about the definition because I'm not sure if you'll have a job in a year’s time.

JOURNALIST: What about the government's proposal around this idea to allow unions within the CFMEU to demerge to their own union. Do you support that?

BURKE: We're still looking, we haven't seen the final legislation on this and we're looking carefully at the detail. The concept of workers in a division being able to make a democratic decision is something that we want to look at constructively. We want to make sure that it's done in a way that doesn't tie every union up in red tape. So that's something where once we see the detail of legislation I'll be able to offer you more.

JOURNALIST: Are you concerned that, you know moving them apart could reduce their bargaining power or reduce their power to negotiate with employers?

BURKE: What we're talking about here is a limited situation where, and there's already under the legislation a period of time where divisions can decide that an amalgamation isn't something they wanted to stay with. The extent to which the government wants to expand that is something it's impossible to give a concluded view on until we see the detail.

ENDS