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April 18th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Pressure is growing for a name change at the nation’s industrial relations watchdog to help give it an image makeover.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) says Fair Work Australia (FWA) has become the “butt of jokes”, and new FWA chief Iain Ross has also said a new appellation would be a good idea.
ACCI chief executive Peter Anderson on Wednesday called on the federal government to change FWA’s name to something “more traditional” like the Australian Industrial Relations Commission or Australian Workplace Relations Commission.
He said FWA had become an object of public ridicule under its current moniker and any system that exerted political or economic power needed to have the confidence of those subject to its powers.
“I have looked from a distance dismayed at the public ridicule that the institution is copping and concerned at what this means for that necessary level of confidence for the system to operative effectively,” he said in a speech to the Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA) in Canberra.
“I don’t enjoy the institution that exercises economic power over my members being the butt of jokes.”
FWA has been criticised over a long-running investigation – which has taken up to three years – into the allegations surrounding the Health Services Union and former official and now federal Labor MP Craig Thomson.
The subject of the investigation was not a matter for business – but given the FWA’s considerable power, perceptions did matter, Mr Anderson said.
FWA’s president Justice Ross, a former supreme court judge, recently backed a name change for the watchdog and said it should be considered during a review of the Labor government’s Fair Work Act.
Mr Anderson also said the similarity between the watchdog’s name, the federal government’s Fair Work industrial relations legislation and the Fair Work Ombudsman was an issue.
“An arbitral body exercising economic power over half a million employers employing half of the labour force and constituting about a quarter of the economy, which operates under a slogan that could easily be mistaken for a government department only adds to the problem,” he said.
But Australian Council of Trade Unions leader Ged Kearney said it was extraordinary that the ACCI was focusing on changing FWA’s name when a major review of the Fair Work Act was under way.
“I just want it to be efficient and fair and able to do its job,” Ms Kearney told AAP.
“Quite frankly it’s the least of our worries.”
Ms Kearney said while the Fair Work Act wasn’t perfect it could be reformed to improve the rights to collective bargaining and the safety net for insecure workers.
“We urged reforms to tackle the disproportionate representation of women in insecure work and advocated for enforceable obligations on employers to accommodate women’s needs in balancing work and family commitments,” she told the ALERA conference.
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