Fairwork

At work recently we did the annual staff pay reviews.  In preparation for this I attempted to educate myself regarding my legal responsibilities.

Wow.
No wonder we don't have a car industry and soon we wont have a ship building industry.   To put it bluntly we are hamstrung by regulation.

I do believe that there is a role for Government to play in setting the rules and to provide protection for some basic minimum standards.  I am also OK with the idea that an employee should have the right to have someone -a union - negotiate on their behalf and also assist them in looking after their "rights".  After all in a big company you can bet that the company representative is skilled at negotiating when the worker is of-course skilled in other areas.  After all that is why they have a job.

But what we have goes a lot further than basic protections.  And it is hardly fair.

Fairness?

Lets start with the idea of fair.  We have over 400 pages of far work act and 120 "Modern Awards".  Neither the employer nor the employee can hope to even come close to understanding that.  If you don't understand it, then how can it be fair?

The sheer bulk of it means that the primary beneficiaries are lawyers and unions.  Employees, if for no other reason than they would have no chance of understanding it even if they wanted to will naturally turn to their union to ensure that they maximise their benefit or at the very least get a fair deal.  Actually with all this red tape you wonder how their could possibly be any space to negotiate.

What it does mean is that if a disgruntled employee wants to sue an employer, there is bound to be a clause somewhere that a lawyer will find to support the employee. 

The Role of Government

I will state up front that I believe that the Government should in all areas have as small a footprint as possible.  In particular I believe that people should be free to make decisions that affect themselves and I believe that they should have to accept the cost and consequences of their actions.

So it seems to me silly that we need such a level of detail in these modern awards.  In some of them there are over 100 classifications of people and each classification comes with its own minimum pay.  I am OK with the idea of a minimum wage.  That protects the vulnerable who are unlikely to have any leverage in negotiations but it is not until an employee is earning over $130 000 that they are no longer covered by an award.  I would suggest that anyone earning over about $50k is a person with enough life skills to not require the government to intercede on their behalf.

They even have an award for engineers.  Imagine that.  Someone earning say $100 000 a year.  Designing, supervising and so on.  The government even classifies and specifies minimum pay.

Cashing out leave
I discovered that in the professional engineers award there is no provision to cash out leave.