Fed: Fed govt launching attack on minimum wage - ACTU

AAP General News (Australia)
02-11-2005
Fed: Fed govt launching attack on minimum wage - ACTU

CANBERRA, Feb 11 AAP - An attack on the minimum wage was behind the federal government's
push for a national industrial relations system, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
president Sharan Burrow said today.

Ms Burrow said so-called harmonisation of the state and federal systems was code for
riding roughshod over the state systems under which about half the country's workers gained
their working conditions.

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews is expected to take submissions
on a range of proposed new workplace measures, including a move towards a unified national
system, to cabinet later this month.

"If the government was serious about harmonisation ... they would sit down with the
state governments and they would look at what are the provisions they can bring on line,
the best provisions to protect working people," Ms Burrow told ABC radio.

"We've got an economy that's driving towards full employment. We've got a range of
areas where the minister said rightly that employees want greater flexibility and yet
they've opposed our work and family test case that would do just that.

"They speak with a general language but the underlying intent is to ride roughshod
over the states.

"About half of the workforce is covered by state-based arrangements."

Ms Burrow said awards were about the minimum standards Australians should be given as a fair go.

"The government is not speaking truthfully when it says it wants to harmonise the system,"

she said.

"What it wants to do is use its unfettered powers in the parliament to make the lives
of working people more difficult, less secure and of course to get rid of critical things
like an Australian minimum wage."

AAP dep/sb/snp/bwl

KEYWORD: WORKPLACE

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