As if we didn't know already

Tastes good, don't it?

SECRET figures reveal that 45 per cent of Australian workplace agreements have stripped away all of the award conditions that the Federal Government promised would be "protected by law" under Work Choices.

The statistics, which the Government has been refusing to release for months, also show a third of the individual employment contracts lodged during the first six months of Work Choices provided no wage rises during the life of the agreements.

They show staff of the Office of the Employment Advocate believed 27.8 per cent of the agreements they examined might have broken the law by undercutting one of the legislated minimum employment entitlements.

Conditions were stripped from the vast majority of the agreements examined, and these included shift loadings (removed in 76 per cent of the agreements), annual leave loading (59 per cent), incentive payments and bonuses (70 per cent), and declared public holidays (22.5 per cent).

...

The Government has refused to publish the information after preliminary figures made public last May from a smaller sample of 250 agreements presented an unflattering picture of the impact of Work Choices on employees.

AWAs are individual employment agreements that override industrial awards. They are one of the most contentious elements of the workplace relations changes. Labor says employers use them to pressure workers into giving up basic entitlements.

The Government has insisted that the agreements provide flexibility to tailor employment arrangements to workplace needs, and that employees can secure significant pay rises under the deals. But the Government has rejected calls to make these statistics public.

...

A spokesman for the Minister for Workplace Relations, Joe Hockey, said last night that it was a narrow analysis that did not include added provisions and rewards such as flexible hours, access to bonus pools and other benefits. "This kind of analysis does not compare apples with apples," the spokesman said.

That of course assumes you even have time to go shopping, let alone afford apples, on an AWA.