TIME FOR TURNBULL TO END HIS ATTACK ON WORKERS' WAGES AND CONDITIONS

Turnbull and his Liberals must can their support for reduced wages and conditions.

Following a community and industrial campaign, Unilever, which owns Streets Ice cream, has backed down from their intention to terminate their enterprise agreement. 

Labor welcomes this decision and congratulates the parties for successfully negotiating a resolution which is good for workers and good for the company. 

 

However, Labor does not accept that the tactic of employers using the threat of termination of agreements during bargaining is fair. The significant increase in the number of enterprise agreements that have been terminated over the past two years has seen too many workers thrown back onto Awards, with reductions in their wages, conditions and bargaining 

A Shorten Labor government will change the law. We will limit capacity to terminate enterprise agreements, in order to redress the imbalance in bargaining power between  workers, their unions, and employers. 

This is in sharp contrast to Turnbull and his Liberals who have actually advocated for the reduction of wages and conditions.

Minister for Education, Simon Birmingham, argued recently that the Murdoch University decision to abolish their enterprise agreement, "should be seized, and hopefully can be replicated elsewhere." 

At a time when wages growth is at record lows, Turnbull and his Liberals would rather support employers wishing to cut conditions of employment, rather than support workers and wages. 

In addition to this, the Turnbull Government plans to further cut real incomes by supporting the decision to cut penalty rates. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Turnbull and his Liberals are seeking to ensure that we are becoming an easy to hire, easy to fire, low wage society, which is undermining job security and making income distribution more inequitable.