GOVERNMENT CONFIRMS AUSTRALIAN WORKERS’ JOB SECURITY GONE

Kevin Andrews has confirmed that the Howard Government’s extreme industrial relations laws leave Australian employees without effective protection from unfair dismissal.

The Government's industrial relations laws remove unfair dismissal protection for employees employed by a business with 100 or fewer employees. This removes an unfair dismissal remedy from nearly 4 million Australian employees.

As if that wasn't enough, Kevin Andrews today asked the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to rule that it is lawful under the Government's industrial relations legislation for an employer who employs more than 100 employees to sack an employee on the basis of so-called "operational reasons", even if the reasons for sacking that particular individual are neither reasonable nor fair.

Mr Andrews' own submission to the AIRC unfair dismissal case of Village Roadshow Ltd and Carter states:

[28] ... if an employee is selected for termination due to operational reasons, the criteria adopted to select the particular employee for termination are irrelevant ...

[30] ... Similarly, it is irrelevant whether the employer could have taken action other than terminating the employee's employment.

[37] Therefore issues such as selection processes, the employee's preparedness to work elsewhere, or the employee's preparedness to take a period of long service leave or leave without pay, or whether the employer should hold off terminating the employment in the expectation that an alternative position may come up in the future, or the suitability or appropriateness of any other options open to the employer ... have no relevance in determining whether the reason relied upon by the employer was an operational reason as defined.

Mr Andrews submission confirms that unfair dismissal protections for Australian workers have effectively been shredded.

His previous assertions that there is nothing new about his "operational reasons" test are now shown by his own submission today to be completely bogus.

For example, Mr Andrews' press release of 3 November 2005 under the heading of "Dismissal for operational reasons" states:

WorkChoices will retain the current law on this issue

But his submission to the AIRC today states:

[22] The 'genuine operational reasons' exclusion was introduced by the WorkChoices Act.

[24] The phrase 'genuine operational reasons' is a new phrase in the WR Act.

[25] Accordingly the Parliament must have intended that the test of whether an employee's employment was terminated for genuine operational reasons or for reasons that include genuine operational reasons is something different

[27] ... that is a lower threshold than the test which is applied to determine whether a reason is a valid reason...

In another example on 7 July this year, in a doorstop interview to discuss the Office of Workplace Services' investigation into the dismissal of 29 workers from Cowra Abattoir, Mr Andrews said:

My point is that what happened in Cowra, after being found by this investigation, would have been the same if it had happened last year or the year before. And the claims that are being made... have simply been shown to be wrong and misleading.

The misleading claims on operational reasons, both then and now, are wholly the Government's and the Minister's.

Mr Andrews has consistently misled working Australians about this legal test that is now central to whether unfair dismissal protection will apply to employees who work for a business with more than 100 employees.

This is the inconvenient truth that Kevin Andrews has been trying to avoid all year, but he's now been nailed on the legal reality by his own submission.

Once again the Government has shown that it will do anything and say anything to avoid the adverse political consequences of its extreme and unfair industrial relations laws.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, 22-Nov-2006 10:26:39 EST