Page 3761 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 24 August 2010
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This bill provides for a registered employee organisation, which in this case will be the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, to provide information on the specifics of the security industry award 2010 and other related legislation to the employee as a requirement for licensing. This ensures that all employees in the industry are equipped with the means to enforce their award conditions as they are licensed. This is of particular importance in combating incidences of employer noncompliance through substandard contracting as it guarantees that this information is available to all employees from an independent source.
Immediately following the last discussion of this issue here, as well as prior to this debate today, we have held meetings with the LHMU and their delegates who are currently working in the security industry to seek information about the nature of the training and to secure guarantees that union membership will be in no way compulsory.
The meetings with the union were helpful and informative, and they have provided us with a copy of their proposed training curriculum, which I will now table in the Assembly for the benefit of members. I seek leave to table the curriculum.
Leave granted.
MS BRESNAN: I table the following paper:
Security Industry Licence Training, prepared by the LHMU.
In this curriculum, as members will see, no element of the proposed curriculum involves any requirement to join the union, which was a concern raised when this matter was previously before the Assembly. Individuals will, of course, be free to join or not to join in accordance with the freedom of association provisions in the Fair Work Act.
Another concern raised by groups such as the Australian Security Industry Association, who we have corresponded with on a number of occasions since this matter was last raised, was that it would duplicate the Fair Work fact sheet that the Fair Work Act requires employers to provide. In response to this, and in support of the bill today, the proposed curriculum clearly demonstrates that this goes well above and beyond the basic catch-all information of the one-page Fair Work fact sheet and provides employees with knowledge specific to their award that will help prevent compliance issues in the industry.
An additional point the Greens would make is that especially in the case of substandard contracting arrangements and lack of compliance with Fair Work requirements, there is no guarantee that workers would receive this information in any case. By providing this information as a part of the licensing process, we can guarantee that all workers receive this crucial information about their workplace rights.
We believe that a registered employee organisation—in this case, the LHMU—is the best-placed player to provide fair, impartial and thorough training to employees about their workplace entitlements. The training will be free, and there will be no additional
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