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PM

Friday 7 July 2006

New South Wales: both sides of politics claim a win in the Cowra abattoir decision

MARK COLVIN: Both sides of politics are claiming the Office of Workpl ace Services decision on the Cowra abattoir sackings as a win. 

 

The office says the Cowra abattoir didn't breach the Howard Government's Workplace Relations Act. 

 

The body, which was set up to oversee the workings of the new industrial laws, found the abattoir didn't act illegally when it sent termination letters to 29 workers in March, then offered to rehire 20 of them on new contracts with less pay. 

 

The OWS deemed the abattoir's actions lawful, because the financial viability of the company and not the workers' union membership was the dominant reason for their dismissal. 

 

The Prime Minister, John Howard, is hailing the decision as a vindication of his new workplace relations laws. 

 

Labor and the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) say the decision proves what they've been saying all along: that companies can sack workers then rehire them on inferior conditions. 

 

David Mark reports. 

 

DAVID MARK: The Office of Workplace Services began investigating the Cowra abattoir a week after the company wrote the termination letters. 

 

Once the investigation began, the company withdrew the letters. 

 

Since then seven of the 29 workers have taken redundancy packages and the remaining 22 have negotiated a new enterprise agreement with the company. 

 

So for the Cowra abattoir and its workers, today's decision was purely academic. 

 

But this decision was always about more than just the fate of 29 workers in Cowra. It was a test case of the Howard Government's new industrial relations laws. And the Government was quick to claim a victory. 

 

Here's the Federal Industrial Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews. 

 

KEVIN ANDREWS: The only reason that the Cowra abattoir's managers sought to take the action that they did, was because of the poor viability of that operation which was at increased risk because of the drought and because of falling livestock numbers. 

 

DAVID MARK: The Prime Minister, John Howard, says the decision is a vindication of the new laws. 

 

JOHN HOWARD: And what we are seeing time and time again is that every time there is a retrenchment, every time there is a problem, the unions and the Labor Party are trying to blame it on the new laws.  

 

Now these new laws are necessary for further strengthening Australia's economy, to further reduce our unemployment, to further boost our productivity. And the Labor Party and the unions are doing their level best to discredit the laws, often by totally misrepresenting their impact, by blaming them when they shouldn't be blamed. 

 

DAVID MARK: But Labor and the unions are also claiming they've been proved correct. 

 

GREG COMBET: I fully expected this result. 

 

DAVID MARK: The Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Greg Combet. 

 

GREG COMBET: And it does confirm a simple thing, that under the new laws it is possible to sack people and offer them their jobs back for $180 or $200 a week less, you know, that is the fact of the matter and no amount of nonsense, deceit and spin by Kevin Andrews or John Howard changes that fact. 

 

DAVID MARK: Labor believes the Government is vulnerable on industrial relations and is viewing the OWS decision as a key opportunity to claw back votes at next year's federal election. 

 

And yet the Party's leader, Kim Beazley, wasn't speaking today. That task was left to Labor's Industrial Relations Spokesman, Stephen Smith. 

 

STEPHEN SMITH: What this decision confirms is what John Howard and Kevin Andrews have been seeking to avoid from day one of their new extreme industrial relations legislation coming into effect: that they've gone massively too far.  

 

Massively too far when it comes to attacking people's wages, massively too far when it comes to shoving people onto AWAs on inferior conditions, and massively too far when it comes to people having appropriate rights if they're unfairly dismissed.  

 

They take them away from nearly four million Australian employees, and they're shredding them, as this decision shows, for the rest of them. 

 

DAVID MARK: The Government is claiming a moral victory out of the Cowra dispute on a second front. 

 

Kevin Andrews argues that the OWS found that the Cowra abattoir did nothing wrong under the new or the old IR laws. 

 

KEVIN ANDREWS: The OWS has advised that not only was there no breach of the current Workplace Relations Act, but also that there was no evidence to suggest that there would have been a breach of the provisions of the Workplace Relations Act as it stood prior to Work Choices. 

 

STEPHEN SMITH: Well Kevin Andrews is saying that, but he's being massively misleading when he says that. 

 

DAVID MARK: Labor's Stephen Smith. 

 

STEPHEN SMITH: There's nothing that the OWS has made public which contains that. It is an investigation into the effects of John Howard's new extreme industrial relations law. It says nothing about the old law. 

 

DAVID MARK: So if both sides are claiming vindication out of today's Office of Workplace Services decision, who is the real victor? 

 

John Stirton is the Research Director for the pollster, AC Nielsen. 

 

JOHN STIRTON: I think anything that puts attention on industrial relations and the changes that have been made, any attention on that, on those changes can only favour Labor because a significant majority of the electorate are still opposed to the changes in the industrial relations laws, and that's unlikely to change in the short term. 

 

MARK COLVIN: John Stirton, Research Director for the pollster, AC Nielsen. David Mark was the reporter.