October 14, 2024

actu change the rules

Why nurses and midwives need to stop business from gaming the system

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Health Researcher Ben from the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association runs us through why current bargaining laws need a real overhaul, to ensure nurse and midwives get their fair share. 

Under the current enterprise bargaining rules, nurses and midwives in the private health sector are being hamstrung in their ability to advocate for better workplace conditions and safe patient care. Business is gaming the system, and both staff and patients are suffering. It’s why it’s critical that the rules are changed around bargaining. The ACTU’s Change the Rules Campaign is pursuing changes that puts unions on a level playing field with businesses when it comes to deliver workers’ pay and conditions.

While many employers follow the rules and bargain in good faith, others have chosen to stall and avoid providing their staff with the pay and conditions that they deserve. The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association’s (NSNWMA) recent negotiations with Allity Aged Care shows how the system is broken and needs to be fixed.

What unfair bargaining looks like for nurses and midwives?

Allity Aged Care is a private Aged Care company owned by private equity. They employ approximately 1,410 workers in New South Wales. Allity has been known for questionable business structures, which have been featured in reports by ANMF and CICTAR.

The following details the bargaining process between the NSWNMA and Allity, and highlights just how Allity gamed the system to avoid providing the staff with better pay and condition.

Timeline of events with the NSWNMA and Allity Aged Care Negotiations

The NSWNMA has negotiated over 970 enterprise agreements over the past 20 years, including 860 in just the last 10. While most employers commence negotiations when contacted by the NSWNMA, this example with Allity highlights the need for the rules to be fixed to ensure fairness in bargaining. The tightening up of rules to prevent employers delaying meaningful negotiations is an important aspect of the Change the Rules campaign, and will benefit not just nurses and midwives.  but workers throughout Australia.

If you want to check out other aspects of the ACTU’s Change the Rules Campaign, clink here.

Seven in 10 Australians want action on wages

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More than 70 per cent of Australians want action on low wage growth according to a new poll conducted for the ACTU immediately prior to the federal budget.

It found that 80 per cent of working Australians haven’t received a pay rise that has kept pace with the rising cost of living in the last 12 months.

More than half of working people had not had a pay rise at all, while a further 28.6 per cent had received an increase so small it did not cover the expanding cost of essential items.

Three in four voters said that low wage growth was either the top issue or an important issue when they considered how they would vote in the federal election.

Wages have been stalled in real terms for more than six years, with real median wage growth close to zero, says the ACTU, despite the consistently optimistic forecasts by the Morrison government for higher wage growth.

More than six in 10 people polled approved of the ALP’s proposal to increase the minimum wage to a living wage.

Inequality is a drag on our economy

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International economic institutions and Australian experts say reducing inequality is essential to a stronger economy, yet Australian politics is hooked on the discredited philosophy of trickle-down economics.

“Low pay won’t fix itself.”

That was the message from 124 of Australia’s leading economic, legal and policy experts who have called for “proactive measures” to accelerate wage growth, raise minimum wages, strengthen collective bargaining, remove wage caps on public sector workers and improve Newstart.

In an open letter published in the Australian Financial Review, the experts say: “In our judgement, the deceleration of wage growth is due in significant part to the impact of deep structural and institutional change, and cannot be explained as a normal outcome of market forces.”

The signatories to the letter point out their views are shared by Australia’s economic guardians: “Policy statements from bodies such as the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Treasury and others also indicate the positive value of faster wage growth.

“We need to see a policy response from governments at all levels – and an acceptance that lifting wages can help the economy, not harm it,” said Professor Andrew Stewart from Adelaide Law School, one of the signatories.

The intervention by Australian experts advocating for improved wages is consistent with analyses by international economic organisations who have recognised how stagnant wages and growing inequality have become a brake on economic performance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have all produced hard evidence demonstrating that high inequality depresses economic growth.

“Reducing excessive inequality is not just morally and politically correct, but it is good economics,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has said.

And OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria added: “Inequality can no longer be treated as an afterthought. We need to focus the debate on how the benefits of growth are distributed.”

Even some of the world’s most prominent and wealthiest business leaders concur.

“People are disconnected and not benefiting enough from economic growth. Inequality has grown. Wages are not rising enough. Business, government and community leaders have a responsibility to help those left behind,” wrote Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, in the Financial Times.

These contemporary economic analyses have failed to trickle down to the key economic players in the current Liberal–National Coalition government who remain wedded to an outdated neo-liberal model.

Mathias Cormann, the federal government’s finance minister, recently conceded that low wage growth was “a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture”.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has argued we should ignore the issue of distribution of wealth and concentrate on “growing the economic pie”.

And Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that “if you have a go, you’ll get a go” flies in the face of the growing body of evidence.

Union plan to reduce inequality and strengthen the economy

The ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign aims to:

  • Ensure real wages rise through the introduction of a new Living Wage, tackling insecure work, restoring penalty rates for low paid workers, raising public sector wages and reforming the collective bargaining system
  • Make sure everyone pays their fair share of tax, including corporations and the wealthy
  • Lift the poorest Australians out of poverty through an increase in Newstart and the aged pension
  • Increase expenditure on health and education
  • Establish a comprehensive jobs plan to reduce underemployment and unemployment
  • See measures introduced to tackle excessive corporate power.

Labor backs our push to Change the Rules  

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The coming federal election is an opportunity to winfairer work arrangements and more secure jobs.

The rules that control our workplaces and job conditions operate well for big business. Profits are booming and executive bonuses are at all-time highs. But for working people, the rules are broken.

Company profits have grown more than five times faster than wages since the middle of 2016, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show.

While wages struggle to keep pace with inflation, too many people are forced to depend on casual and insecure jobs.

Years of legislative changes have stripped the union movement of the ability to effectively represent members and win bigger pay rises.

The union movement’s Change the Rules campaign aims to give workers more rights to obtain secure jobs and fair pay rises.

The Labor Party has backed important parts of the Change the Rules agenda.

Labor says if it wins government at the next election it will stop employees being forced into casual work if the job is not genuinely casual.

Under a Labor government, if someone has worked regularly as a casual for over 12 months, they will get the right to convert to permanent work if they wish to do so.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten says Labor will change the Fair Work Act so that employers must pay labour hire workers the same as direct employees.

He says employers often use labour hire firms purely as a means to pay workers less, or to deprive them of conditions and security.

“Our policy is based on a simple principle: if you are doing the same job, you should get the same pay,” he says.

Many employers have been telling workers they must get an ABN and set up their own business to do what was once a permanent job.

Labor has committed to stop employers forcing people to get ABNs so they can be paid less than the legal minimum.

It has also promised tougher action against employers who engage in “wage theft” – deliberately underpaying workers and refusing to pay mandatory superannuation.

Bill Shorten says a Labor government will legislate to fine employers three times the amount they steal from their workers.

The ACTU has welcomed the promise, saying wage theft is now so common that in some places it’s the business model.

“There are business owners all over Australia getting rich by stealing from their staff and the current industrial laws make it far too easy,” says ACTU Secretary 
Sally McManus.

How the gig economy impacts on wages

$14.62 What an Australian UberX driver earns on average per hour

$18.29 The statutory minimum wage per hour

$30.00 The award pay for workers in the sector when weighted for penalties.

In addition, drivers miss out on other protections and entitlements such as superannuation, workers compensation and leave entitlements.

Source: Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute

Where the parties stand on Changing the Rules

Labor

  • Will stop employees being forced into casual work. Employers will no longer be able to call someone a casual if the job is not genuinely casual.
  • Will give people the right to convert to permanent work – with the rights that go along with it – if they have worked regularly for over 12 months.
  • Employers will have to pay labour hire workers no less than permanent workers.
  • Labor will require employers to prove they cannot hire local workers before the government issues temporary work visas. Temporary migrant workers will get Australian market wages and employment rights.

Greens

  • Support the ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign.
  • Introduced legislation into parliament to give casual and rolling contract workers the power to convert to secure employment.
  • Introduced legislation into parliament to give people the right to work fewer hours if they want.
  • Support the restoration of the right to take industrial action, consistent with international law.

Liberal National Coalition

  • Defends the reduction of Sunday and public holiday penalty rates.
  • Prime Minister Scott Morrison describes Labor’s plans to raise wages as “economic vandalism” that would cost jobs.
  • Jobs Minister Kelly O’Dwyer says wage growth must be sustainable and the path to prosperity is lower taxes. “This is why we pursue lower taxation, more investment in infrastructure and more free-trade agreements,” she said.
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