The Federal Government’s WorkChoices legislation has now taken effect, and businesses across the country are struggling to come to terms with it
By Craig Donaldson
The Federal Government’s WorkChoices legislation has now taken effect, and businesses across the country are struggling to come to terms with it. Despite claims that WorkChoices would cut industrial relations red tape in the workplace, most HR practitioners are simply scratching their heads in confusion at the moment. With hundreds of pages of changes, explanatory memoranda and new regulations to wade through, WorkChoices has become to HR what tax legislation is to accountants.
As Leona Lobo writes in her letter to the editor (left), HR is between a rock and a hard place given the penalties for non-compliance combined with management pressure to introduce changes. The nebulous nature of much of the legislation has the Government, unions and business all at each other’s throats over different interpretations of WorkChoices.
Furthermore, the Government has been forced to send Department of Employment and Workplace Relations representatives into the breach (only after media pressure) after a few companies have taken the lead in applying the legislation as they see fit. Some of these test cases are now headed for the courts in order to try and get some clarity around interpretations of WorkChoices.
Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect clarity and a clear congruence between the letter and the spirit of the law in the new legislation. Then again, maybe the Government should have done a bit more thinking before rushing it through Parliament. It’s not unreasonable to expect the government of the day to side with business in its political agenda. But in its hurry to do so, employers have been left in the lurch, and, as we noted last year, this would (and has) resulted in a lawyers’ picnic.
In an effort to be seen to be doing something, the Federal Government recently announced the formation of a team of special investigators to police compliance with WorkChoices. But the irony of the announcement was that they would focus on investigating breaches of Court and Commission orders – which may take some time yet to be handed down.
It would appear the Federal Government itself doesn’t know how to interpret some of its own legislation. WorkChoices – more work indeed.
