AS A RESULT of the Federal Government’s planned industrial relations changes, a major challenge for HR professionals will be maintaining the trust and confidence of employees who may be concerned about employers seeking to use the changes to undermine terms and conditions in their workplace
AS A RESULT of the Federal Government’s planned industrial relations changes, a major challenge for HR professionals will be maintaining the trust and confidence of employees who may be concerned about employers seeking to use the changes to undermine terms and conditions in their workplace.
“In some industries, there will be an important role for HR in countering negative messages from the union movement about the reforms,” said Jennie Mansfield, senior associate, Blake Dawson Waldron.
“Often, those messages won’t reflect the company’s position and could destabilise the positive relationships that many HR practitioners have spent years fostering with employees within their businesses.”
The positive message to convey to staff, according to Mansfield, is that the changes can open up flexibilities which will benefit both employer and employee by providing more choice about employment arrangements.
“While unions will be demanding undertakings that current terms and conditions will be preserved, HR practitioners will need to take care that negotiations in anticipation of the reforms don’t restrict the company from pursuing those changes which will be of genuine benefit.”
Line managers will also need to be convinced about the bottom-line benefits of moving away from long-enshrined arrangements, she said.
“The role of HR practitioners as business partners will require them to analyse the commercial implications, short-term and long-term, as well as the employee relations impacts of changes in terms of stability, productivity and flexibility.”
Mansfield encouraged HR professionals to consider ways in which they may have to deal with these issues and keep abreast of the proposed changes and identify opportunities for change that will further their company’s long-term objectives.
“For example, the proposal for federal minimum conditions legislation has the potential to solve some of the problems national corporations currently face in administering a variety of different state leave provisions,” she said.
In pursuit of his agenda Prime Minister John Howard will start with changing the rules for agreement making and bargaining in Australian workplaces. The focus for employers, unions and employees will move more to negotiated workplace outcomes, said Mansfield.
“Where there are currently collective arrangements in place, the changes are likely to provoke serious consideration about a move to individual agreements,” she said.
“While this may see an increased take-up of Australian Workplace Agreements, there is also potential for employers to decide that common law contracts are best suited to their needs, since awards will have less scope to contain restrictive provisions which dictate the use of a certified agreement or AWA to override them.”
The ACTU opposes the move to AWAs, arguing that such a change poses the greatest threat to take-home pay.
“[Federal Treasurer] Peter Costello says that he wants individual contracts to become the ‘predominant’ form of workplace bargaining, and that is what the laws clearly aim to achieve,” said ACTU secretary, Greg Combet.
“The inherent problem with AWAs is that individual employees do not have equal bargaining power with their employer.
“Individual contracts can be used by employers to dictate the terms of employment and exercise unilateral decision making.”
Under the Government’s plans, Combet said there will be pressure on existing employees to give up their penalty rates and new employees could be required by an employer to sign an individual contract that takes away their entitlement to penalty rates just to get a job.
