Australia’s cost-of-living crisis can be explained in one graph:
While everyday Australians have been under cost-of-living pressures, big business has made record profits.
Now big business has demanded Australian workers have their workplace rights cut. This will make it even harder to get pay rises.
Peter Dutton wants to be Prime Minister and has promised to do what big business wants and abolish many of the important workplace rights working people rely on for wage rises.
The last time the Coalition was in power, wages didn’t grow for ten years.
Ask yourself: in a cost-of-living crisis, can you afford a government that takes your rights and wages away?
The last thing working people can afford is cuts to their workplace rights and wages.
Profits used to rise in line with wages.
But a decade under the Coalition government saw profits soaring above wage growth. Why?
Because Liberal wage-cutting loopholes made it easier for big business to exploit workers. And that meant workers’ wages were lining big business’ pockets instead.
Then inflation hit, and big business used it as an excuse to price-gouge hard-working Australians. And while the rest of us are still struggling, big business profits and CEO salaries remain sky high.
At the same time, big business has tried to keep wages low – opposing increases to the minimum wage and spending millions to try and block work laws that deliver pay rises for workers.
The Coalition have said pay rises should only come with productivity gains, but here’s the thing: historically, our wages and productivity have grown together. That only stopped under the last Coalition government, when wages stopped moving.
If workers’ wages had actually grown in line with productivity under the Coalition, workers would now be around $10,000 better off.
We’ve finally started to see wages move in the right direction. In fact, real wages over the past year have grown by the same amount as the total rise over nearly a decade of the previous Coalition government.
Peter Dutton wants to be Prime Minister and will do what big business wants.
And that means sending people backwards by abolishing the rights that workers rely on to get pay rises.
We know he will do this because he has said so.
‘We’ll stay off your backs’ Dutton tells business leaders – The Australian
Peter Dutton promises to overturn Labor’s IR reform in the next election – Sky News
IR policy war erupts after Liberal leaks – The Australian
Dutton says Childcare worker pay rise is a one-off sugar hit – The Age
In a cost-of-living crisis, can you afford a Dutton Government taking your rights away?
Don’t risk Dutton with your work rights
Union members have won significant workplace rights over the last two years, that have improved job security, made work safer, delivered wage rises and led to meaningful progress in closing the gender pay gap. Peter Dutton is on record promising to rip away these rights. Let’s take a closer look.
Higher Wages
Multi-employer bargaining allows workers working for similar employers to come together and negotiate across multiple employers.
These changes bring outdated bargaining laws into line to reflect modern workplaces.
These changes have already supported workers in female-dominated industries like Early Childhood Education and Care to win long-overdue pay rises.
Sham contracting is where employers try to hide the true nature of an employment contract. They do this by claiming employees are contractors to avoid legal obligations they should make to that employee. Workers on sham contracting arrangements earn $242.80 per week less than genuinely independent contractors; over a year, that’s over $12k. ACTU research shows that around 565,000 Aussie workers are on these sham contracts. This unethical loophole has now been closed.
Owner drivers in the transport industry work on razor-thin margins and often have to wait up to 120 days to be paid. New laws mean they should…
Labour hire workers could see significant pay rises, thanks to Same Job, Same Pay laws.
Labour hire started as a last resort option for employers but has since exploded, with unscrupulous employers – like Qantas and big mining companies – gaming the system and underpaying workers on labour hire contracts who are doing the same job as their directly employed workmates.
The new rights mean that labour hire workers are entitled to at least the same pay, and big wage increases and secure jobs have already been won off the back of the new laws.
Dutton and the Coalition voted against these new rights. Big business wants workers’ rights to be cut and Dutton has promised to do this.
Greater job security
A new common-sense definition of casual work has been introduced. This overturns the Coalition Government’s approach of letting an employer call anyone a casual and getting away with it.
Dutton voted against this new job security for casuals and he’s committed to take these rights away should he win Government.
Gig economy workers on digital platforms will finally get some of the basic rights and pay the rest of us take for granted, thanks to world-first new laws that enforce minimum standards. Until now, workers such as rideshare drivers and food delivery workers often worked for below minimum wage.
If these new standards lift their pay just up to the minimum award wage, they’d be earning over $400 million more each year, according to the Government’s analysis.
Peter Dutton voted against these standards for gig workers. Big business wants workers’ rights to be cut and Dutton has promised to do this.
Stop wage theft
Wage theft is rife across Australia: workers are losing up to $1.35 billion dollars to wage theft every year. Wage theft robs workers of what they are rightfully owed and denies them the ability to buy the necessities they need to live.
Wage theft was previously only a criminal offence in some states in Australia. But now, deliberate wage theft is a criminal offence at the Commonwealth level.
Penalties have increased up to five times to deter employers, as well as possible prison time for the worst offenders. Unions have also been given better rights to stop this in the workplace. Superannuation theft has also been included, which will help workers retire with dignity.
Dutton and the Coalition voted against these new rights. Big business wants workers’ rights to be cut and Dutton has promised to do this.
The right to disconnect
Life’s stressful enough without being expected to work outside your paid hours, but with technological advances, people can now be contacted outside of traditional working hours.
It is worth remembering that workers had the right to disconnect before using smartphones. This new law restores this work-life balance by letting an employee reasonably refuse to monitor or respond to out-of-hours work contact.
Dutton and the Coalition however want to remove this right, effectively expecting you to work for free outside of your contracted hours.
Family and domestic violence leave
All employees, including full-time, part-time, and casual employees, are entitled to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave each year. The Albanese Government made this their first change in workplace laws.
This will mean that a woman escaping a violent relationship does not have to choose between her job and her safety.
Ensuring women get respect at work
For the first time in Australia, workplaces with over 100 employees must publish their gender pay gap. Publicising the gender pay gap is a tool that works – it shines a light on entrenched practices and structural inequalities that see women in the lowest-paid positions.
Pay secrecy can lead to serious inequality at work and is a big contribution to Australia’s gender pay gap. But the new laws mean that pay secrecy clauses have now been banned, meaning workers can talk with each other about how much they earn. Pay transparency empowers workers to challenge pay discrimination and wage inequality in their workplaces.
We’ve also seen tougher laws on sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, as well as fairer access to justice for victim-survivors of workplace sexual harassment, who no longer face the risk of being burdened with the other side’s legal costs in court.
Dutton and the Coalition voted against protections against sexual harassment and new rights to deliver respect at work.
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