Like many Australians, I’m looking forward to spending the next few weeks, relaxing, doing some reading, hanging out at the beach, catching up with family and friends – and doing a few chores around the house that I’ve been putting off for far too long.
But, of course, many others worked yesterday, and will be working during the summer break. When I was a nurse, I often worked on public holidays, including Christmas, which gave me a real appreciation of the penalty rates unions have won as compensation for those rostered on at those times.
Many of those who work during the Christmas holidays are casuals. For many people with insecure work this is hardly a festive season as they work long hours just in order to keep a roof over the heads and food on the table.
If you’re in insecure work you’ll know how much more difficult it can be trying to not only make ends meet but make sure the family can enjoy the season. It can put a strain on families as they juggle bills and the demands that this time of year puts on the household budget.
Other insecure workers face a different problem. The nature of their work means that there is no holiday to take at this time of the year. It is simply a time when they have no work, and consequently, no earnings. Which brings me to the subject of the Christmas Scrooge.
Each year, Your Rights At Work runs a poll to identify the Scrooge of the Year. It’s a shame we still have to do this, but as each year passes, we find that employers have spent the last 12 months strengthening their attack on their workers, demanding changes to the Fair Work Act, looking for loopholes within the laws, locking out staff, refusing to negotiate with unions and cutting jobs.
This year, we identified seven nominees.
Ted Baillieu: for plotting to take away the nurse-patient ratios that help Victorian nurses deliver quality care to patients and for refusing to pay them what they deserve. The Victorian Premier has shown similar contempt for other public servants, announcing just before Christmas that 10 per cent of the workforce would be slashed.
In fact, Ted Baillieu probably deserves yet another nomination, because Victoria is the only state that refused to designate Christmas Day as a public holiday. That meant that for those Victorians required to work, not only did they miss out on spending the day with their family and friends, but they also did not receive extra compensation for it.
Baiada Poultry: for the Victorian chicken factory’s deplorable treatment of its mainly migrant workforce, forcing them to work for cash and at below minimum wage rates and in dangerous conditions. The hard-fought victory for better pay, conditions and job security at Baiada was one of the highlights of my year.
Barry O’Farrell: for introducing legislation limiting wage rises across the NSW public service to 2.5 per cent, unless the increases are matched by employee-related savings. He then also took away basic collective bargaining rights, including the right to appeal, in a unilateral decision for which he had no mandate. We haven’t heard the end of this.
The Australian Mines and Metals Association, the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry: for leading the business sector’s constant exaggerated and biased statements deploring the Fair Work Act as part of their plot to force a return to WorkChoices-style laws.
We look forward to next year’s review of the Act, which will finally dispel the myths perpetrated by the big business lobby and expose their true agenda where workers have no say over their conditions at work, which has no place for collective bargaining, for the concepts of a safety net to protect the most vulnerable, or an independent industrial tribunal.
Tony Abbott: who has spent yet another year attacking workers’ rights and insulting the workplace relations laws that replaced the Howard Government’s WorkChoices, yet has failed to come up with a single policy idea in the area.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Liberal Party has been happily talking about how they would like to get rid of most of the improvements delivered to workers by the Fair Work Act. There’s an old saying that you can run, but you can’t hide – and eventually Tony Abbott is going to have to ‘fess up that his approach to workplace relations is simply WorkChoices under a different name.
Fijian Government: for openly defying international concerns about workers’ and the general community’s labour and human rights abuses, before inviting an ACTU-led delegation to come and see conditions in the nation for itself, only to shut the gates on their arrival.
The board and senior management of Qantas: for its outrageous display of employer militancy, threatening in October to lock out staff and ground all aircraft, leaving thousands of passengers stranded all over the world for several days and costing the company a $190 million self-inflicted wound.
In our poll, the struggle for who would be crowned our biggest workplace Scrooge was mostly between Barry O’Farrell and the board and senior management of Qantas. In the end, Barry O’Farrell won it easily, with more than 40 per cent of the vote – and it’s hardly surprising given how quickly he launched his attack on the public sector workers, immediately after coming into power in March.
But in the aftermath of launching our poll, it became clear that there was another employer who equally deserved to win Scrooge of the Year. Locking out your workers is bad enough, but to do it over Christmas is abhorrent. But basic decent values have eluded many employers this year and soft drink company Schweppes has shown there are no bounds to their disdain for their workers.
Around 150 workers were locked out by the company last week after they took lawful industrial action to fight changes to rosters, changes that will see them moving to 12-hour days and forcing them to lose half their Saturdays with no more than token compensation.
The dispute has also begun to affect supply of Schweppes products in the crucial Christmas and New Year period, with reports of supermarkets across the country running out of key brands like Pepsi, Schweppes and Cottees, as workers maintain a 24 hour protest outside the Tullamarine factory
There is something we can all do to support these workers, however. When you’re stocking up on drinks for your new years’ party this year, consider using a non-Schweppes brand. Make the company pay, just like it’s making its workers pay.
Ged Kearney is ACTU President
NOTE: This was first published on The Punch on 26 December
R@W News is a forum for news, analysis and commentary about rights at work and related issues. The opinions presented in R@W News are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent policies or views of the ACTU.