News

Last week CEPU National President and CEPU Communications Division Secretary, Ed Husic appeared before the Senate Inquiry into the Rudd Government's Fair Work Bill today on behalf of CEPU members.



Ed, in his appearance before the Inquiry, urged the Committee to consider the CEPU's proposals on strengthening the Bill in some aspects, but welcomed other areas of improvement as against the current WorkChoices legislation.



Ed focussed on the way Telstra was attempting to squeeze the most out of the WorkChoices laws before they were changed. He highlighted the rapid rollout of non-union deals in Telstra - and how desperate the corporation had become as members rejected the offers.

"We’re witnessing at present in Telstra an extraordinary and, in our view, quite undemocratic process of slicing and dicing the workforce down to groups as small as five in order to gain employee endorsement of non-union Employee Collective Agreements," he said. "While we’re on this point I would ask: What is the Workplace Authority Director’s view on this raft of non-union agreements they’re being asked to sign off on? And does the agency have any view about the way corporations are tripping over themselves to get these deals up, regardless of whether the method of doing so accorded genuine choice to employees in the bargaining and ratification phase? Are they ensuring they are “agreement in fact”?

"We’d also be interested in pursuing these points with the Workplace Ombudsman. We would respectfully submit to you given major companies like Telstra will only take note of black letter law, then the Fair Work Bill’s transitional arrangements should include a public interest test that could be applied to non-union deals rushed out under WorkChoices before 1 July. The test should strengthen the ability of the Workplace Authority to determine if these deals are agreement in fact – and have an ability to prevent abuse of the law where employers manufacture organisational restructure purely for the purpose of generating a gerrymander to see their agreements succeed. Legal action will take too long – but the Government can act now, providing the ability for quick intervention to hold up rushed, unfair agreements."