While the ACTU purports to represent the best interests of Australian workers, it wants to stop employees from having the power to negotiate with their employers for more flexible working conditions under the modern award system.

The ACTU attempted to stall VECCI’s application, which is currently before Fair Work Australia (FWA), to have the minimum engagement terms in 80 awards varied.

VECCI Manager – Workplace Relations Policy, Alexandra Marriott, says the ACTU’s stalling tactics failed to address the real issues faced by both employees and employers with respect to the impact of modern awards.

“VECCI made these applications because our members don’t believe modern awards meet their objective of ‘social inclusion’ and are not flexible enough for either employers or employees,” says Ms Marriott.

If VECCI’s proposed provisions are included in the 80 awards that prescribe minimum engagement terms, it will mean school students, mature age workers, those with a disability and primary carers will be able to get jobs on their own terms, where employers can offer different conditions, such as shorter hours of work.

Practical examples of how the modern award system doesn’t meet its objective of social inclusion include an employer who was unable to employ a single mother who couldn't work the minimum four hour shift stipulated by the respective award and mature aged workers finding it hard to work the minimum four hours required by awards.

In terms of businesses such as grocery and hardware stores, the modern awards system has forced employers to dismiss young and vulnerable workers.

“VECCI’s action is in no way intended to remove the safety net that exists within modern awards, but as a way to get more people employed, at the same time as helping employers improve productivity and improve diversity in the workforce.

“If the ACTU was serious about its charter of ‘representing Australian workers and their families’, surely it would support action which would mean people who previously faced barriers to entering the workforce being able to gain employment,” says Ms Marriott.

In its arguments to FWA, the ACTU and the affiliates it is representing have not responded to the substance of VECCI’s application but rather gone down the well-trodden path of painting employers as ‘big, bad, bogey men’.

This just isn’t the case – employers want to employ people, people want to be employed but they are being held back by the inflexibility of the modern awards system.

VECCI’s application to FWA raises important issues about cultural and societal shifts in workplaces and VECCI thinks there should be a broader discussion about how inclusive modern awards really are.

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