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Bishop brands IR laws unjust, unfair
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| 6 August, 2006 |
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| Bishop Manning |
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THE Work Choices legislation is “manifestly unjust” and unfair and the Government has “failed in its duty to promote the common good”, according to Bishop Kevin Manning, the Bishop of Parramatta.
Bishop Manning, an outspoken critic of the IR laws, said they breach the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the social teaching of the Church.
He said employees cannot be treated as commodities and that in Catholic thinking, people are not valued according to their work, but rather work is valued because it is the free act of a human person.
He said the great injustice of Work Choice legislation is that it “obliterates the principal instrument of collective action which is collective bargaining”.
“The right of workers to act collectively is central to Catholic social teaching. It was stated explicitly in [the encyclical] Rerum Novarum,” he told a Work Choices seminar staged by the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations (CCER) in Sydney last Monday.
“Let us be very clear about this: there is no right to collective bargaining under the legislation,” he said.
“Any collective bargaining that may take place is entirely at the whim of the employer.
“This is manifestly unjust!
“The removal of the right to collective bargaining places the new legislation in breach of the ILO’s Convention on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, 1998, which states that all member States, even if they have not ratified the Convention, are obligated to promote and to realise in good faith, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.”
Bishop Manning said the legislation also is designed to hit hard at the disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in Australia.
“Work Choices violates Catholic Social Teaching on the Option for the Poor and, indeed, any reasonable notion of a ‘fair go’,” he said.
“The already unemployed, people in rural and regional Australia, women in casual and part-time jobs, the disabled, and young people will suffer disadvantage under this legislation.
“In the regulation of the labour market, governments have an obligation to protect the rights of the vulnerable. No fair-minded person could say that Work Choices does that.”
Citing the use of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) the bishop said the legislation was weighted “too heavily”, in favour of the employer.
“There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an AWA provided that the worker is highly skilled and has a sophisticated capacity for negotiation,” he told the seminar.
“In the workplace, some, but by no means all, workers will have skills of sufficient marketability, and the capacity to negotiate an AWA which suits them, but the fact remains that the majority will not.
“In eliminating the constraints imposed by the Award system, the legislation stacks the scales in favour of the employer, and particularly to the disadvantage of vulnerable groups.
“I suggest that, in this legislation, the government has failed to promote the common good by removing fundamental measures of fairness, and treating disadvantaged groups with disdain. For these reasons,
the legislation falls far short of the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.”
He told the seminar that the Church as a very large employer must have her own house in order if she is to continue to speak with credible force on this legislation.
“The Church is under a very heavy obligation to observe the principles of her own social teaching,” he said.
“She must recognise the relational context of work; she must deal fairly with employees and groups of employees; she must have particular regard for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.”
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