AWA and the next step for employers

Once the Howard government has demolished the unions, particularly with the help from big business, you will see the next step in the process of Industrial reform.

AWA's will be subject to scrutiny, generally no one can be paid less than the award and employees will be compensated to some extent for the loss of some entitlements.

The next step is to avoid AWA's altogether by hiring persons not as employees, but hiring persons to provide services as a subcontractor. On the surface this may seem appealing to some workers as they may feel they are more in control of the work they do and they can act as their own boss.

The disadvantage of this is the business engaging your services do not have to pay you the award rate of pay or any entitlements whatsoever that an employee would enjoy. As an example, there are orchestras working in Sydney with members that have been paid fees of about 40% below the award rate for over 6 years with no other entitlements whatsoever.

Loss of entitlements would include: no overtime rate of pay, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no termination pay, no redundancy payout, no employer funded superannuation, Inadequate workers compensation, no enforcement of workplace safety.

To enforce workplace safety the individual would have to approach the employer and the employer would most likely react by not using that particular subcontractor to provide his/her services.

Workers compensation would be inadequate because the employer only pays a premium based upon the payments made to the subcontractor. Subcontractors cannot obtain their own workers compensation as this is not available to them, as most subcontractors are regarded as "sole traders".

All in all, it looks pretty grim for the average worker and very rosy for big business.