The opposition's sudden leap out of the path of the oncoming workchoices train was probably encouraged by this piece of news.
SMHMOST of the individual Australian Workplace Agreements negotiated under the Coalition's Work Choices system stripped away working conditions ranging from shift penalties and overtime to public holidays and allowances.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, yesterday released statistics collected by the former government on the content of AWAs negotiated during the first crucial months of its Work Choices reforms.
The statistics, which the Howard government refused to release, came from a sample of 1700 AWAs examined by the Office of the Employment Advocate between April and October 2006.
They show 70 per cent of the AWAs in the sample removed award pay loadings for working unsociable shifts while 68 per cent excluded the 17.5 per cent annual leave loading.
Award entitlements to penalty rates of pay were removed in 65 per cent of the individual agreements and incentive-based payments and bonuses were stripped away in 63 per cent of the AWAs.
Just under a third of the individual employment agreements removed award provisions dealing with rest breaks while 50 per cent excluded extra payments for working on public holidays.
The statistics did not show the size of any wage increases included in the AWAs in return for the entitlements which had been removed.
However, they showed that 32 per cent of AWAs examined did not include a pay rise at all.
A guaranteed wage rise was included in 25 per cent of the agreements while another 43 per cent included a potential wage rise which was not guaranteed.
Ms Gillard released the figures in an effort to continue portraying the Liberals and Nationals as the parties which presided over the unpopular Work Choices system, despite the Coalition's decision yesterday to drop its former support for AWAs.
She said the former government had collected the figures but deliberately stopped them from being analysed or released to hide the truth about Work Choices.
"They deliberately decided they did not want to analyse the dimension of the rip-off of Australian working families," she told Parliament.
They looked up and saw Julia waiting for them with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers and cried uncle. I thought we desperately needed workchoices and we'd be doomed to eating rats in the crumbling shells of our once great cities. I was expecting the Libs to put it all on the line for the sake of the nation's economy, why do they have to grow a brain now? That bush turkey, Julie Bishop was prepared to go with workchoices like, well, a bush turkey crossing a four lane highway, they should have let her. Never in her life will Bishop be Gillard's match. Never. It's the political equivalent of watching a Zatoichi movie. "Hey, she looks harmless, and we outnumber her, let's..." *whoosh* *chop* *chop* *chop*.... *thud* *thud* *gurgle* *thud*. Niall, I hope you've managed to get to parliament to see this live.
2 comments:
Bishop's overly calm patronising school marm esq voice grates on my fucking nerves. There's no passion there. I think she'd dead inside.
Agreed Mikey...she's had her botox injected into her heart and soul regions. She looks like she'd torture kittens for something to do...
In brighter news, isn't the spectacle of Julia Gillard taunting the Opposition during Question Time the most delicious thing you have ever seen?
"I'm trying to explain complex mathematics to someone who can't count."
Fantastic.
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