SPEECH - TRANSPORT WORKERS UNION NATIONAL COUNCIL - DARWIN - MAY 5, 2021

Acknowledgements

My background pre-politics was as a union organiser in retail for about six years.

And while the shoppies, the union I continue to be a member of, is always home, I've got to say the TWU has also always been family.

Before I was in politics and in my whole time in Parliament, the relationship to the TWU has been a bedrock for me.

And there is a real sense of a very long-term friendships and relationships around this room.

I want to acknowledge Michael Kaine as the Secretary, the new president, Ian Smith, and outgoing president Richard Olsen and the Assistant National Secretary, Nick McIntosh.

But I want to particularly acknowledge the way Michael's made sure that it's not just official meetings in the boardroom.

From the moment I got the portfolio he had me standing and meeting with Jetstar workers straight away.

That was before the pandemic. Then the pandemic hit and I found myself either in rooms or in very empty airports, standing with Virgin workers, standing with Qantas workers, standing with Dnata workers, being cruelly locked out of JobKeeper.

Meeting people like Brian Bevan, who had been, since I think it was 2007 or something, with Dnata. Although when he joined it wasn't Dnata. So he went to get a job with a company that under the rules as they came down later, would have ended up being eligible for JobKeeper. But because of decisions that had nothing to do with him, and were in fact approved by the Government for the takeover, he ends up working for a company doing the exact same job for the exact same set of passengers and suddenly discovers that he's been left behind and left with nothing.

So there is a difference in how you advocate when you're advocating for an idea and how you advocate for people who you've heard, met and spoken to.

It's the privilege that you all have with every dispute that you're involved in as union officials.

For us federally, we sort of deal with the big levers a lot of the time and we often don't get to be face to face with the people that we're helping around the country. You always are.

And there is a dignity for those people in the work that you do that I've got the upmost respect for.

I should acknowledge the three senators who Michael acknowledged: Glenn Sterle, Tony Sheldon and Alex Gallagher. You look at the significance of their work. Glenn leads the road transport inquiry. Alex leads the wage theft inquiry. Tony leads the aviation and insecure work inquiries.

And I'll give a particular shout out to Tony Sheldon, who was the only other member of Parliament willing to join me for a press conference held at midnight to make a point about penalty rights. And I think we did make the point about how inconvenient late night work is because one of the journalists at the end of it said to us: Yep, you made the point. Can you please not do this again?

Which, in fact, only encourages us.

I'm trying to build the industrial relations policy that would really anchor everything into job security.

Some of that's driven by the times and some of that, I'll tell you straight up, it's a passion I've had ever since my days as an organiser.

I'm from Sydney. I remember holding a midnight meeting for the night fillers stacking shelves at one of the stores in Burwood. And one of the people was asking a whole lot of questions about their rights and entitlements.

I remembered her. And the next morning at eight o'clock I was at Roseland shopping centre, and she was serving me a coffee.

And it was the first time I really got a handle on the fact that more and more people, to make the security of bills be met, can't get the security of a single job.

And a whole lot of the rights and entitlements I'd been talking about the night before were in fact irrelevant.

Minimum break between shifts? It doesn't matter if to make ends meet you've got to go to the next job.

She was working overtime across three different jobs. So she never would have received a dollar of overtime pay.

And I've always wanted to make sure, in terms of job security, that we could get policies that allow people with a single employer to be able to get the hours they want.

Now, COVID brought something that for me had been a personal passion right into the national spotlight.

Because what happened with COVID was all of a sudden we saw the virus being spread by workers who had to work across multiple workplaces.

We suddenly saw that a third of the workforce in Australia didn't have sick leave.

So it was one thing saying if you get sick, if you've got any symptoms, you need to isolate for two weeks. It's another thing when that is suddenly leaving people with nothing to live on.

And it meant we have normalised, for a third of the workforce, a situation where when you get sick, most of the time just keep turning up. The danger that means to you with your own health and the danger it can mean for your colleagues if you've got something contagious. Or just the danger to fellow colleagues as having someone who's not working at their best in terms of safety.

So COVID brought these issues out.

And while we think about the messages in terms of the ways we were shaking hands with elbows and things like that, the real lesson that I think came out of COVID in terms of the workforce was just how insecure work is in Australia.

Job insecurity takes a lot of forms.

For me, back in the day, as I was describing, back in the early 2000s, you used to think about job insecurity as whether you had a permanent or a casual job.

But it's much more than casualisation now.

Labour hire. Outsourcing. Gig work. Fixed term consecutive contracts. Casualisation. Sham contracting. Wage theft.

All issues that go to the heart of whether or not someone can in fact have a job that will pay their bills.

Now, I'm yet to find rent that is casual. I'm yet to find a mortgage that is casual. I'm yet to find an electricity bill that is casual or grocery bills that are casual.

Every other payment in life keeps coming relentlessly, week after week after week.

And we need to deliver a workforce set of rules, and a Fair Work Act, that gives people a better opportunity to simply have a job that allows them to get ahead of the bills, without having to feel that they've got to be constantly juggling multiple jobs or insecure shifts. Juggling that and not knowing whether or not they're ever going to be able to get in front, get ahead, of all the bills coming in.

What's happening as we come out, we're not past the pandemic but we're past some of the lockdown period, what's happening with the workforce is quite diabolical.

A lot of people say they want to get back to where we were.

From what I've just described with insecurity, I don't want on the other side of this for Australia to look like it did before the pandemic.

Anthony Albanese, the federal Labor Party, we want to make sure that we build back better.

We want to make sure that on the other side of the pandemic, we are moving to a nation where jobs and work have more security attached in the future than they had in the past.

And when you hear the Government at the moment occasionally wanting to celebrate unemployment figures, make sure you look behind the numbers.

You fall off the unemployment figures the moment you're earning one hour a week. One hour a week.

One hour a week has you employed. But it doesn't have a job that will pay the bills.

And the last figures which were written up in the media as just an extraordinary comeback for the economy.

Think about this.

At the exact same time that the economy was opening back up, that new jobs were being created, 21,000 full time jobs disappeared?

How do you do that? How do you have a situation that, as the economy is opening back up after lockdowns across the country, that 21,000 full time jobs are disappearing?

And this is where, unless we get the laws right at a federal level, we will come out of this pandemic in a worse situation than we entered it.

We're actually in the process now of being one of the nations with some of the least secure working conditions in the world. With some of our conditions, in terms of the number of people without basic entitlements for a country within the OECD, it's extraordinary where we've landed there.

But for the number of permanent jobs to be decreasing as the number of jobs increases tells you exactly what's going on.

And we need to be able to get these policies right.

So everything that we're doing with our policies is built on three principles: secure jobs, better pay and a fairer system.

On job security. First thing we’ll do on secure jobs is make it - and it's bizarre when you think about it that this has never happened - which is to make job security one of the objectives of the Fair Work Act.

Now I know at one level that sounds like a bit of legalese. What does that mean? It means every time the Fair Work Commission has to make a decision, job security is in the frame. Every single time.

Second thing we'll make sure that happens is there is a fair objective test of what is casual work.

One of the things that we lost in the parliamentary vote a few weeks ago was when the government and One Nation got together to basically say that if an employer says you're a casual then you're casual. And to allow complete rorting of casualisation - from a minority of employers but it's still out there - for that to continue.

In government also we'd be a model employer.

It's not enough to set the rules - you have live by them as well.

And a model employer, including how we use our procurement policies and favour companies that are delivering secure jobs.

Now, think about the impact that has.

So if you get a government contract you've got to be giving more security to your workforce. Companies will then be favouring security simply because they're intending to tender.

Some companies only work for government but a whole lot have operations that go way beyond government.

So if you put into government policy for its procurement rules, that we're favouring and counting secure work as part of that process, that affects the entirety of the company's operations.

Next thing is fixed-term contracts.

It's hard to find other countries in the world where this happens the same way.

But for fixed-term contracts, it's incredibly common now for people to in fact never receive the simplicity of a permanent job.

They're employed for three months, they're employed for 12 months, they're employed for two years. And at the end of that, they've got to get another contract or the job automatically goes.

Effectively it means you can spend your entire working life on a probationary period. That's the working reality of it. But in Australia, at the moment, we have no limit on how many consecutive contracts we can have.

Our policy says two years, two consecutive contracts.

There are occasions where a short-term contract is real. But if they keep getting rolled over, it's not real. It's effectively a way of saying to someone, "Your job will never be secure".

The next practice is 'same job, same pay'.

Now a lot of talk of this has been focused on the impact on labour hire.

But it also very directly affects outsourcing - which I know there's a whole lot that you've been dealing with here, particularly in aviation. So I want to go through this in a bit of detail.

I'll start with the mining examples, which brought it to the party's attention some years ago.

I was out in Central Queensland a few weeks ago, met with a whole lot of workers, a whole lot of miners, who were doing the same job on the same shift at the same mine. But about half of them were being paid less than the other half.

The union had negotiated a rate of pay for the mine. Everyone who was employed by the mine at the time of the negotiation was on that rate of pay.

But then the company set up, within the company, another business and then started employing people through that. Having been employed as labour hire, they went all the way back down to the award. And they were then employed as casuals.

So for all the talk of casual loading, by using this device: first, completely undermined a negotiation that had gone through, registered by the Commission, the workforce had voted for and the business had agreed to. Completely undermined that. Secondly, every time we hear talk of casuals get paid the loading, because the award was so much lower than the site rate, the casuals even receiving the loading were still earning less.

So you've got a situation where someone who gets leave entitlements is earning more than someone who gets none.

If you've got same job, same pay, then where labour hire has a legitimate use, and sometimes surge workforces and things like that it can, then it will only be used for that purpose. Because it can't be used to undercut.

And in the exact same way, for some of the major aviation businesses that have engaged, having just received extraordinary government support, in some pretty extraordinary outsourcing of work, for people to have to reapply for their own jobs. If it's same job, same pay, then a whole lot of the incentive for companies to behave this way disappears.

But one of the biggest shifts in the economy has been for gig workers.

And gig work is starting to take place in a whole lot of different areas of the economy.

A lot of people don't realise, for example, the NDIS and in aged care now, a huge chunk of the workforce work through apps, where the Government is in fact paying a fixed fee for a job to be done, and all that money goes to the platform. And then workers are effectively underbidding to be able to get the job. And the platform just pockets what's left of taxpayers’ money after the workers have been underpaid.

So it's pernicious, it's growing.

There are aspects of the technology that people want, and I get that. But we cannot allow 21st century technology to be a pathway to 19th century working conditions.

Now I have to acknowledge, the union that has been absolutely leading the way on defending workers in the gig economy is the Transport Workers Union. You have you had been the frontline of this.

And the policies that we've developed has been very much with your voice and the voices of your members in mind.

If the message hadn't gotten through to the public yet, there were five reasons why I think the message finally started to reach the public last year.

Dede Fredy. Xiaojun Chen. Chow Khai Shien. Bijoy Paul. Ik Wong.

Five people in two months.

And it wasn't without warning. Your members and the workers you organise have been explaining to me since before the gig economy the link between rates of pay and safety.

Right back when I was Shadow Minister for Small Businesses in 2004 and 2005.

Your then Secretary Tony Sheldon had me turning up to meetings and at that point, for the first time, committing the Labor Party to the principle of safe rates within the heavy vehicle industry.

So it's an article that I'm no stranger to.

The way this has now ricocheted into the gig economy is extraordinary.

I've had members take me through and take Anthony Albanese through, that Michael has brought down to Canberra, explaining what happens when the rates get so low.

Why you do run red lights. Why you do end up in a situation where you are riding between the parked vehicles and the traffic, with the risk every few metres of being doored and suddenly you're lying down on the road rather than riding on it.

The link between safety and rates is real.

Those rates have now got to below Australia's minimum wage.

Now, when I say these arguments are being understood - they're not being understood by everyone.

The Government's saying it's too complicated. It's complicated.

Like of all things you can say is complicated, I'm surprised the minimum wage is something they've decided is too complicated to have implemented.

But that was the position of the former IR minister. It's the position of the Prime Minister. The current IR minister hasn't said anything about it but it's the position of the Government.

Now, I wanted, before I go into how we plan to fix this, I just want to tell you one quick story from Monday night.

Monday night I was at an Iftar in Punchbowl, in Sydney. Iftars are during Ramadan for people who are fasting, having not eaten all day, the Iftar is the meal where they get together and break a fast.

A whole lot of the people at this Iftar were Pakistani students. And out of nowhere, they're just chatting at the table I was at, and they started talking about one of their friends. And it was Bijoy Paul. And they talked about the reality of his family not being in a position where they could have his body repatriated. And so as his friends they had to organise the funeral.

And the company was saying it had nothing to do with them.

The insurance company in the first instance was saying there was no valid claim.

And they were talking about just the horror of losing a friend and having nowhere to turn in a country that wasn't their own.

And without prompting from me, they said the only organisation that stood by them they could rely on was the TWU. The only organisation they could rely on.

And, you know, we in the federal Labor Party take a lot of pride from the term "on your side".

And as a union movement and as a union representing people in this horrible situation, I can only tell you, when telling their worst story, the moment when their eyes lit up with a bit of pride was the respect they were given by the TWU.

Now, there is a defence that gets run by the gig platforms. And it was being run in The Australian a few weeks ago, where the paper had a new study that Uber had released letting us know that Labor's talk about the minimum wage being undercut in the gig economy was not true.

Because they had averaged what Uber delivery riders were receiving and the average came out at $21.55.

And the minimum wage is $19.84. They're being paid more. So it's all fine.

First, the minimum wage is a minimum, not an average.

Secondly, if that's the minimum wage you're meant to get, you get public holidays, you get sick leave, you get annual leave, you get superannuation, you have an employer paying insurance for you. You're assisted in the cost of work. None of that is true.

And so we have a situation now where effectively all the rights of a worker fall off the cliff if you are defined as a contractor.

Now, I know from years of schooling by the TWU that there are a range of circumstances for people who fall off that cliff.

There are some people who are quite genuinely running their own business and are truly independent. And there are a whole lot of people who are dependent at various levels depending on their circumstance.

Now some countries, both Joe Biden's made an announcement and the UK has gone down this path, have worked on redefining what an employee is to bring in people within the gig economy.

I've got to say I'm worried about that. I welcome it but my fear is this: the gig economy has got to where it's got by looking at the law and finding a way to evade it.

If you change the law, their motivation won't change.

And while we might catch them for a while, I'm worried that it will be a race of them constantly rejigging their model, looking at how it's defined in law, and rejigging their model to try and avoid the law a little further.

So for this reason, what we want to do is really simple. You expand the role of the Fair Work Commission. They no longer say, if you're not an employer you're nothing to do with us.

Instead, you allow them, the Fair Work Commission, to set standards for people, for workers who are employee-like.

And that allows the Commission to deal with the shades of grey.

It allows them to say 'this person is dependent in some ways, not a whole lot, there might be some minimum standards there'. For this person working as a delivery rider, for all intents and purposes they are quite directly dependent and need to have minimum standards.

And it's a simple test, which I think is not a bad one to apply. I'm yet to find someone who goes into business to earn less than the minimum wage.

So the moment you see rates like that, you know there's a rort going on.

The employee-like process will give the Commission the power to fix it.

And the beauty of it is this. If the companies keep trying to evade whatever the rules are that are brought down by the Fair Work Commission, we given the Fair Work Commission the exact same flexibility to chase them down and hunt them down until we've got minimum standards in Australia again.

To get the Fair Work Commission to do this though, you've got to do two things. This is why I talk about a fairer system, because you have to both make sure the Fair Work Commission has the power to do the right things but it also has the personnel to do the right things.

Now, the appointments that are coming from the Government are pretty disturbing on the Fair Work Commission.

Each time I read this it doesn't sound true. But it is.

We've got a deputy president paid $460,000 a year who spends his time decorating his office with cartoon anime dolls dressed in lingerie, which, when he was asked to have them removed, replaced it with a life-size Donald Trump to show how impartial he was. It's alleged at the office Christmas Party last year, he had too much to drink, went upstairs to the balcony and started throwing illegal fireworks off the balcony down to the public footpath below, which is now triggering both police and Comcare investigations. His name's Gerard Boyce, he's been appointed until the year 2038.

Probably the least conciliatory Member of Parliament I've ever served with is Sophie Mirabella. She's now in charge of conciliation for workplaces across the country. She effectively replaced Anna Booth, a woman with a long and outstanding career representing vulnerable workers and a fine deputy president. Sophie Mirabella is there until 2033.

There's another who's a Liberal deputy mayor of an outer suburban council. This Liberal deputy mayor is on the record opposing paid family and domestic violence leave. Her name's Alana Matheson, appointed at the same time as Sophie Mirabella, she has been appointed until the year 2047.

Of our original 46 appointments that we made in government, which were balanced from people from both sides of the negotiating table, only 16 of those remain.

This eight-year-old government has now made 28 consecutive appointments, many of them blatantly political, ideological or just completely unsuitable.

Now, these are the people regulating the workplaces. Getting the laws right is not enough. You need to also have a balanced Commission.

Some people have suggested, "Why can't we just blow the whole thing up and start again?"

I'm really reluctant to do that, I've got to say.

Two reasons. One, it's a horrible precedent to set. But secondly, working people need strong institutions. Those who want to rip the system down don't need the institutions at all. But working people need strong institutions.

I'd rather fix it than start again.

And the way to do that effectively means that a Labor government will need to actively and deliberately return the Commission to balance with appointments that are made.

You put those things I've gone through together, you get three things: you get secure jobs, better pay and a fairer system.

And that makes a huge difference to working people's lives.

And it also makes a big difference to the economy.

We are more dependent as a nation on people within Australia spending money than we have been in living memory.

There's not a whole lot of tourists coming in these days.

We need people to have the confidence to spend money. And for that you need two things: you need confidence, which means security. And secondly, you need money. You need to be being paid fairly.

Catherine King will address you later in the week on issues in the aviation sector that you've been fighting for. And National Conference just endorsed your call for action on this.

We've also recently witnessed the indignity forced upon loyal employees of one of Australia's most iconic companies, making them bid for their own jobs in the face of outsourcing.

Just as I've stood with your members on so many issues, with the frustration that your members in Qantas in particular are feeling right now, we are there in solidarity, we are on your side.

By having the 'same job, same pay' policy, as I said, we would take away the incentive for this to happen.

Despite the challenges and disruption caused by COVID-19, there's huge opportunity that we learn the lessons from it and we do things better.

We can't do it better with the rules we currently have.

In fact, what we're seeing right now is if we leave the rules in place as they are, we will build back worse.

An Albanese Labor government has a plan to make sure that we use every means available to not only create jobs, but to create good jobs, to create secure jobs.

You'll hear both sides of politics talk about jobs a lot over the next 12 months.

But you will only hear the Labor side of politics talk about secure jobs, and job security.

We want to work with you to do this. The best of some of the proposals and the policies that I've just discussed - it's me reporting back to you on your own ideas.

It's me reporting back on work that you as a union put together from ideas and experiences because you are so close to the membership.

I've got to say, I've always felt if you want to know what's happening, one of the really good phone calls you can make is to call a union secretary or a union organiser.

Because there is information you get that I will never get again.

I remember the day I stopped being an organiser, I realised every time I walk into a lunch room I'd be treated as a visitor or a guest. Not as part of a team.

You have conversations that are incredibly valuable.

I want to thank you for the way you always brought those to us. I want to thank you for the engagement with me that goes back, we're getting close to two decades now.

We will be a better government because of the work of the TWU. And because of the relationship and engagement between the TWU and the Labor Party.

Australian workers will be treated much better and they will have the secure jobs that they deserve.

ENDS