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How Low Can You Go? Minimum Working Conditions under Australia’s New Labour Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Colin Fenwick
Colin Fenwick*
Affiliation:
Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, University of Melbourne
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Abstract

The Work Choices package of legislative reforms has significantly altered both the institutions and the instruments of the federal regulatory architecture for setting minimum working conditions. This paper surveys the reduced role of awards and of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, before considering the function and content of the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard and Australian Pay and Classification Scales, as well as the role of the newly created Australian Fair Pay Commission. It argues that the Work Choices reforms have shifted power over the setting of minimum working conditions to the government, which will set many conditions directly, and to employers, who will be entitled to require employees to be party to workplace agreements that displace very many of the minimum working conditions that are otherwise purportedly guaranteed. These shifts have opened up the space for significant reductions in minimum working conditions, as well as for falls in real wages for those not able to benefit from wage bargaining.

Type
Work Choices: A Critical Analysis
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 16 , Issue 2: Work Choices: A Critical Analysis , May 2006 , pp. 85 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2006

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Footnotes

*

I thank Rosemary Owens (University of Adelaide) and Brendan Avallone (Minter Ellison, Melbourne) for their helpful comments on an earlier draft, and Ingrid Landau for her research assistance in the preparation of this paper. Any errors or omission are mine alone.

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