Page 3760 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 2010
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The Greens stand quite proudly as a party that believes in the union movement as the democratic voice of the worker. We believe in progressive unionism where employers and employees, through their respective organisations, can work together towards their mutual goals and rationally discuss their points of difference through a good faith bargaining system with compulsory arbitration as a means of last resort.
We believe that most employers in the security industry seek to do the right thing by their employees. However, the nature of the industry is such that those security businesses who do refuse to pay the award rates for evenings and weekends, or engage in substandard contracting arrangements, are able to substantially undercut those businesses who do play by the rules.
It is difficult for clients who seek to hire security firms to distinguish between good and bad employers. Often this will mean that poor employment practices are rewarded with contracts. This creates a perverse economic incentive for other employers in the security industry to follow bad employment practices and, in effect, creates a race to the bottom.
As members in this place should be aware, the Fair Work Ombudsman conducted an audit of the security industry that found widespread problems in the application of award conditions. As at the release of the report, 49 per cent of security businesses audited had some form of compliance failure. The ombudsman has recovered over $450,000 in unpaid wages and entitlements for employees in the security industry. Substantial increases are expected as investigations are ongoing.
I think everyone here can agree that in a low-paid industry like security, unpaid wages and entitlements can mean the difference between paying bills and making rental payments or not being able to do so. Of additional concern was the high incidence of phoenixing, which is defined as the act of self-liquidating an entity to avoid paying liabilities and replacing it with another to undertake the same function, and substandard contracting. This is the practice of disguising an employment relationship as an independent contracting arrangement, which is often used to avoid paying entitlements under the award as well as payroll and other taxes.
The ACT Greens commend the Fair Work Ombudsman for undertaking this audit. We recognise and support the valuable work that the ombudsman does in enforcing workplace rights. However, relying on the ombudsman to operate proactively is an inefficient means of ensuring compliance in an industry that has a high number of short-lived small businesses.
The ombudsman’s report noted that of the businesses targeted in the audit, 58 per cent were unsuitable for having no employees, being unable to be contacted or no longer existing. The threat of a possible Fair Work Ombudsman audit is not an effective deterrent against these businesses. As such, the most effective means of ensuring compliance is to arm the workers in this industry with the knowledge about the specifics of their award entitlements to ensure that they can enforce their own conditions, either independently or with the assistance of a union if the person chooses to belong to one.
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