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May 9th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Business and industry lobbies say the Coalition’s new industrial relations policy is too cautious and will not deliver confidence to the economy.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott released his industrial relations policy on Thursday, pledging no changes to unfair dismissal laws or measures to set penalty rates in the first term of a Coalition government.
The policy brings in tougher penalties for “dodgy” unions and union officials, according to Mr Abbott, and will tighten union access to workplaces and restrict when strikes can be held.
Keen to sidestep memory of WorkChoices and its disastrous effect on the Coalition at the 2007 election, Mr Abbott said the policy, which retains the current Fair Work system, provided “incremental and evolutionary changes”.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry says it is disappointed individual contracts are not back on the agenda and have been ruled out for the Coalition’s first term should they win government.
The group’s chief executive, Peter Anderson, says the Coalition’s policy is disappointing and will not deliver economic confidence.
“They have not gone far enough with this policy announcement,” he said.
“In doing so, they have not been able to deliver the measure of confidence that the Australian economy needs if they were to be elected.
“We largely will have the old fair work system based on one-size-fits-all rules, based on collective union bargaining in place, both in content and in structure, and that’s a disappointment to us.”
‘Cautious document’
The chamber’s views have been echoed by Australian Industry Group chief executive Innis Willox.
“Overall we find it to be a cautious document, timid in some ways, and there are some hits and misses in the document,” he said.
“It’s a reasonable first step, but there are still, from our perspective, a lot more that needs to be done to free up workplaces.
Overall we find it to be a cautious document, timid in some ways, and there are some hits and misses.
“That doesn’t mean a return to WorkChoices, far from it, but there are further steps that could be taken.”
More changes to industrial relations laws are not off the table indefinitely, with Mr Abbott promising to establish a Productivity Commission review into the Fair Work Act.
He says any recommendations would be taken to a new election to seek a mandate.
Mr Anderson says the chamber is concerned changes have been put off until the Productivity Commission looks at the issue.
“What Tony Abbott’s proposed here is to not only leave the Fair Work laws structure in place, but to leave most of the content of the Fair Work laws in place as well, until the Productivity Commission have a look at them,” he said.
“What that means in a practical sense is that we have three or four years before there is material change.”
In a practical sense … we have three or four years before there is material change.
Mr Anderson says the chamber has conducted a survey of 1,700 business which shows three out of four businesses are having difficulties managing and administering the Fair Work laws.
“[Those businesses] are much more entitled to their measure of industrial relations justice, than people who are sitting back in the textbooks and looking at these laws through academic institutions or even the Productivity Commission,” he said.
Unions concerned
ACTU president Ged Kearney says she is deeply concerned about the push for greater access to individual flexibility arrangements.
“The Coalition have put individual contracts fairly and squarely at the centre of their industrial relations policies,” she said.
“All workers in Australia know about AWAs [Australian Workplace Agreements], they know about individual contracts – what it means is they leave wages, they leave conditions, they lose any semblance of negotiating power in the workplace.”
However, the Coalition’s policy document states the Opposition would not reintroduce Australian Workplace Agreements.
‘Hiding their intent’
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten says the Coalition is desperate to hide its intentions for industrial relations until after the election.
He told Lateline there was a disturbing lack of detail in the policy document.
“The Liberal Party do not want you and I, or anyone else, talking about workplace relations and by and large they’re trying to hide their intent,” he said.
“We know what they did before the 2004 election, they didn’t want to talk about WorkChoices and then they brought it in.”
Earlier on Thursday Mr Shorten said the Coalition were “repeat offenders” and could not be trusted on workplace policy.
“Tony Abbott’s extreme workplace relations policies should send a shiver up the spine of every Australian worker,” he said.
“They love individual contracts like ducks take to water.
“We saw what happened in WorkChoices – they said, ‘oh, you can trust us, we’ll put protections around them,’ then what happened is we saw story after story, victim after victim, cutting penalty rates, cutting shift rates, changing people’s start times, no notice on rosters.
“The Liberal Party cannot be trusted on workplace relations.”
Topics:
industrial-relations,
business-economics-and-finance,
industry,
federal-government,
government-and-politics,
federal-elections,
elections,
liberals,
unions,
australia
First posted
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-09/business-brands-coalition-ir-policy-timid-cautious/4680200
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