Economic and Labour Relations †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Economic and Labour Relations. Answer: Introduction: The Fair Work Act 2009 is the main legislation, which governs the workplaces in Australia. The Fair Work Act provides the foundation for all the regulations and standards related with employment. Therefore, it is significant for the employers in all industries and all business sizes to be familiar with this key piece of legislation. The rows or obligations that have been mentioned in the Fair Work Act for employees and employers are known as the national workplace relations system (Gostencnik, 2009). This system has been introduced the bill to provide a balanced framework related with productive workplace relations so that national economic prosperity can be promoting and the social inclusion for all Australians can be ensured. Hence, this means that this legislation has been introduced for the good of all and there are no subjective or biased perspectives presented in this legislation. Fair Work Act (Cth) was introduced in 2009 by the Labor government. This legislation replace the earlier work choices legislation, which was quite unpopular. Therefore the main aim of introducing the Act was to improve the lives of the employees at workplaces in Australia. This was the reason that it was delayed by a number of Australians that the employers have too much power as compared to the employees due to bridge the employees were forced to agree to working hours and images that were not up to their expectations. It was claimed that the earlier legislation, before the implementation of the Fair Work Act undermines the rights of the workers and they had considerably less control over their own workplace choices and the earlier legislation also allowed unfair dismissals by the end was to go unchecked. One of the more significant changes introduced by the new Act was the right to organize provided to the employees (Catanzariti and Shariff, 2005). The earlier legislation has the p rovisions regarding union interaction at the workplace. Similarly, it was also discouraged by the employers and the industrial relations law. On the other hand, the Fair Work Act not only supports the involvement of the Union but it also encourages it in two ways. The first is in the form of enterprise agreements, and the other is the right to organize. Therefore, now the employees are allowed to bring union representatives at the workplace and talk to them during their break, although a notice has to be given a full 24 hours. This has been hailed as a significant improvement and expected to have a positive impact on participation by the union, although there are certain issues that still need to be resolved in this context. Another major change, introduced by this legislation is the right to collective bargaining. It is said that this writer has a major impact on the employees at the Australian workplaces. This Act has returned a number of rights that were taken away by the Work Choices Act in 2006. Some of these rights included the new Award safety net , as well as the Fair Work Australia (for the purpose of ensuring that the rights of employees are protected) and the right of low-paid workers to bargain collectively. The result of the introduction of all these changes is that there has been a decrease in the number of working days that are lost in industrial disputes. Hence it can be said that the Act had a positive impact on the employers when it comes to respecting the rights of the employees (Ford, 2000). Employee Workplace Protections: The protections provided to the Australian employees were strengthened considerably as a result of the implementation of this Act. The main areas where this impact can be seen are the increase in minimum wage, protection against unfair dismissal and protection from unfair changes as well as the elimination of unfair individual contracts. The protection provided to the employees against unfair dismissal can be described as a major area of impact, particularly when it is compared to the unbalanced dismissal laws that were present in the Work Choices Act. As a result of the new regulations, protection has been provided to all employees who are in employment for more than 12 months, against unfair dismissal. It had a major impact in ensuring the prevention of unfair dismissal faced by the elderly, female or disabled employees on very unjust grounds (Cooney, 2006). After the implementation of this Act, now the employees can make a claim for unfair dismissal in such cases. Moreover, it is treated as conversation and has significant impact on the protections provided to the employees who have to deal with unlawful unfair dismissal. An example that can be given in this regard is that of Barclay v Board of Bendigo Regional Institute of Technical and Further Education (2011) FCAFC. The brief facts of this case are that Barclay, an employee of the Board, was also a member of Australian Education Union. He took action for the Union who had contacted him regarding their questions concerning the upcoming audit and fraudulent documents. In response to his questions, the CEO sends an e-mail to all of the employees and warned them against talking to Barclay. Moreover, he was suspended from employment and coming to work and his access to Internet was also cut. The court ruled that all this amounted to adverse action. The reason was that Barclay was acting as an official of the Union at the time. He was involved in industrial action. When he was su spended and cut off from Internet. This was the first case that was ruled under the new Act by the High Court. This decision also reveals the complete extent of the protections provided to the employees by the new legislation and also the support provided by it to the union members. Another important change that is the result of this Act, and that has an impact on the protections provided at the workplace in Australia was the abolition of AWA and introducing enterprise agreements as well as good-faith bargaining. Good faith bargaining had much positive impact on the workforce of Australia regarding adaptability and flexibility and also in terms of the claims that in the first 10 months of the introduction of this Act, the number of individuals that were covered by any demand increased by 10 percent. As a result of this agreement system, now the employees cannot be made to sign a contract due to which the employees may get less money than they are already getting. As a result of these changes, there has been greater participation by the unions in the process of agreement negotiation. Due to this reason, the employees now have a greater voice in the bargaining and the process of contract negotiating. All this has considerable impact on issues like union interventi on while under the earlier legislation; the voice of the employees was limited. In the end, it can be said that the implementation of Fair Work Act, 2009. There has been a major impact on the rights and protections that have been provided to the workforce in Australia. These changes are particularly positive in context of the rights enjoyed by the employees regarding union participation and action without the fear of reprimand (Billing, 2009). This position has also been established with the help of Barclay decision and also the protections related with good-faith bargaining and wage fairness when the employee contracts were drawn. In fact, factors like these that have been discussed in the present work resulted in creating a strong impact on the reestablishment of the power imbalance that was created as a result of the Work Choices Act (Catanzariti, 2001). However, it needs to be mentioned that still in Australia, there is much need for the development of industrial relations laws so that the workforce of Australia can be assured that it is supported in the sam e way as required. Hence there certain areas of the workforce that there has been only a limited impact on the rights and protections and therefore, further legislative changes are also required. Although the introduction of Fair Work Act has been welcomed but still there are certain there are some shortcomings like the need for having even better safety net, which provides a confidence to the employees to create a work-life balance. It has been claimed that a limited impact was present on the rights of the employees to claim flexible working hours as these cannot be claimed in case of aged parents or the children over the age of five years. Similarly, it is also been stated that there are certain problems present with the good-faith bargaining system. Therefore, there is a need for fairer and more appropriate options in case of different types of businesses. References Billing, S., (2009) Fair Work Act 2009: Fairer for Whom? 8 Catanzariti J. and Shariff, Y., (2005) Major Tribunal Decisions in 2004 47(2) The Journal of Industrial Relations186 Catanzariti, J., (2001) Freedom of association restrictions on outsourcing Law Society Journal 48 Cooney, S., (2006) Command and control in the Workplace: Agreement-making under Work Choices 16(2) The Economic and Labour Relations Review 147 Ford, W J, (2000) Being There: Changing Union Rights Of Entry Under Federal Industrial Law 13 AJLL 1 Gostencnik, V., (2009) Fair Work Bill 2008: What You Need to Know Now About the New 23 Hall, R. (2005) Australian Industrial Relations in 2005The WorkChoices Revolution 48(3) Journal of Industrial Relations 291 Industrial Landscape (Part 2) Keeping Good Companies, Corrs Chambers Westgarth