Page 3105 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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case clearly in the Senate, the House of Representatives and as part of a Senate committee that looked at the bill, where my colleague Senator Penny Wright wrote a dissenting report.
Ms Berry has already discussed in some detail various problems with the bill and the problems that it can cause to workers and families, particularly groups who may already be marginalised or disadvantaged. I would like to focus on one issue in particular, which is also one my federal colleagues have taken issue with—that is, the amendments to the individual flexibility arrangements proposed in the bill. These IFAs were actually put in place by the former federal Labor government. They allow an employer and employee to depart from legally defined minimum conditions, provided that an employee is purportedly not overall worse off.
These IFAs do not have to be preapproved at Fair Work Australia, which means that compliance and fairness is only tested if an employee has the resources to sue their employer. How often would this be the case? I do not think it would occur often, especially as the people being offered these conditions are probably not likely to have the means or the security to go off to the industrial arbiter and test their case. So what these IFAs mean is that an employer could enter into a legally binding agreement with their workforce one day then contract out of it with an individual the next day.
The amendments in the Fair Work Amendment Bill introduce a new note which reads, in part, “Benefits other than an entitlement to a payment of money may be taken into account.” The government also wants to change the test so that non-monetary benefits can be taken into account when an employer determines if their employee is better off overall. In short, the changes would allow an unscrupulous employer to say to a newly employed worker, “I know about the minimum wage, but I’m not interested in paying you that. I’d like to offer you less than the minimum wage but add a few benefits on the side. That might be different from the legislated minimum wage, but it’s really up to you. You can take it or leave it.”
There are some serious questions to ask about this proposal. As my Greens colleagues have said, does a burger and chips from the owner of the corner shop allow them to deduct $10 from a young person’s already low wages? The proposed changes would mean that it is legal for a cinema owner to say, “How about we enter into an individual flexibility agreement where I pay you less than the minimum wage but I’ll throw in some movie tickets as well?” Now, movie tickets or burgers and chips do not help a person when they need to pay their bills or buy their groceries. A person cannot call up their power company and say, “I can’t pay my electricity this quarter, but can I offer you some tickets to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?”
The Greens have drawn attention in particular to the difficulties that legislation like this can cause for young people, especially in the context of an already harsh federal budget. Under that budget a young person who is looking for work will have to spend the first six months looking for work with no income at all. They cannot even receive the Newstart allowance. If they do not find a job they are placed on the work for the dole program. At the end of that time, if they have not found a job, they will again spend six months without any income at all. Of course, if that person becomes sick, they will have to pay a copayment on their visit to the GP as well as a copayment for any tests and prescriptions they might need to have.
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