FED: Union power is back at ALP: Hockey

AAP General News (Australia)
04-28-2007
FED: Union power is back at ALP: Hockey

SYDNEY, April 28 AAP - Australia's workers will have no choice but to negotiate through
unions under Labor's proposed workplace laws, federal Industrial Relations Minister Joe
Hockey says.

Mr Hockey lambasted federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party for their
workplace policy documents released today at the party's national conference in Sydney.

It would create 10 guaranteed national employment standards for all workers, including
a standard 38-hour working week, four weeks paid annual leave, penalty rates for working
on public holidays and minimum notice periods for termination or redundancy.

Labor would create a national industrial relations regime for the private sector and
scrap Australian workplace agreements and statutory individual contracts.

The policy has won the backing of the ACTU but Mr Hockey said the policy proposals
would benefit unions and not workers.

"There's nothing in the policy about penalty rates on weekends or for overtime and
yet the Labor Party and the union movement have spent $100 million campaigning on this
over the last two years," Mr Hockey told reporters in Sydney.

Mr Hockey said every worker in Australia would be compelled to have their employment
contract negotiated by a union.

"Every worker in Australia is going to have, by law, a union membership form shoved
under their nose," he said.

"It's an extraordinary provision to say that even if there's not one union member on
site the unions can negotiate on behalf of the workers if they go direct to the employer.

"It's no surprise there was no debate on the floor of the conference because the union
bosses got absolutely everything they wanted.

"The union bosses are back in town with this policy."

AAP cpm/rp/arb/mn

KEYWORD: LABOR WORKPLACE HOCKEY

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