Ben Packham and Brendan Nicholson
    From: The Australian
    January 13, 2012



THE Coalition wants to improve the ability of workers to trade away penalty rates to help them secure shifts that suit their individual circumstances. 

Opposition workplace relations spokesman Eric Abetz said the Coalition was concerned that flexibility arrangements in the Fair Work Act were not working adequately, preventing employers and employees from striking mutually beneficial deals.

He said he did not support the restaurant industry in its push for an exemption from the "better off overall" test, meant to ensure workers were not financially disadvantaged when bargaining.

In a sign of the Coalition's thinking on its yet-to-be-released workplace policy, he said many employees wanted to work non-standard hours and were prepared to forgo award-enforced penalty rates if they could secure nominated shifts.

"You will have people, especially students, who cannot work Monday to Friday and their only opportunity to work is on a weekend or evening, and if they are starting to get priced out of the market, then they are in fact being denied jobs," Senator Abetz said.


"And then the question is: are they better off overall when they have no opportunity to work?"

He said the Coalition was also considering a policy position that would prevent workers or employers from overturning individual flexibility agreements with just 28 days' notice.

The Coalition would look at extending the fixed term of such a deal to "up to three years", Senator Abetz said. "Clearly the capacity of a unilateral cancellation on 28 days' notice is a huge disincentive for anybody wanting to enter into an individual flexibility agreement because there is no certainty that can be provided."

Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten said that in 20 years of bargaining on enterprise deals, he had found there was "plenty of flexibility and win-win available".   ;)

"In the real world you can bargain," he said. "The Liberal vision of enterprise bargaining is the employer looks at the worker and says, 'I'm the enterprise and you're the bargain'."   :(

ACTU secretary Jeff Lawrence said Senator Abetz was articulating a Work Choices-style system in which employers could slash workers' entitlements without compensation.   :o

"They want to get rid of the no-disadvantage test; they don't want workers to be compensated for losing conditions that don't have a monetary value attached to them," he said.

But Senator Abetz said Labor had promised that workers could give up penalties without financial compensation, citing an example in the Fair Work Act's explanatory memorandum.

The document raises the case of a worker who agrees, through an individual flexibility arrangement, to start work early two days a week, but forgo morning shift penalties, so he can finish early and coach an under-12 soccer team.

The agreement is said to pass the better-off-overall test because the man wanted to coach the team and he initiated the flexibility request.