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. The IR laws are hurting Australia's Indigenous workers who face high unemployment, low wages and weak bargaining power in the workplace.
The past 10 years under the Howard government have seen a mass erosion of workers' rights. For Australia's Indigenous workers, who are often among the most low-paid, with the weakest bargaining power in the workplace, the latest IR changes are biting hard.
Already, the new IR laws have forced the shelving of a planned award for workers on the Community Development Employment Scheme, a work-for-the-dole scheme. About 32,000 CDEP workers have no access to leave, superannuation or other entitlements enjoyed by non-CDEP employees. While the scheme is designed to be a transitional program, CDEP participants can end up holding these 'transitional' jobs for many years.
Within the education sector, for example, CDEP participants are filling critical positions as Aboriginal liaison officers and teachers' aides, but are paid significantly less than their non-CDEP counterparts (see 'Fixing the CDEP 'transition').
A charter of rights
The AEU, as part of the broader union movement, is determined to fight
for the hopes and aspirations of the 120,000 Aboriginal Australians
in the workforce. In a significant initiative, the ACTU is developing
a charter of Indigenous Employment Rights that will form the basis for
workplace and social justice campaigns over the next few years.
AEU deputy federal secretary, Darcel Russell, is the chair of the
ACTU's Indigenous Committee that is responsible for the charter's creation.
She says that in the wake of the postponement of the CDEP award process,
the committee recognised the need for a broader approach to the issue
of Indigenous workers' rights. The unions' work on the CDEP award process
highlighted issues such as widespread under-employment and the lack
of access to education and training.
The right to decent work
The most significant right encompassed by the charter is the right
to decent work. It also covers fundamental aspects such as union access
to workers, rights to organise and access to equal pay and conditions,
including to entitlements such as super. Russell says the more specific
rights denied to Aboriginal workers include, once again, such basics
as the right to work-places free from racism and discrimination, access
to training and mentoring, the recognition that cultural work such as
caring for country and cultural business is work of equal value, and
recognition of Indigenous knowledge as being as valid as Western knowledge.
A good example of cultural recognition in the workplace is the provision
of 10 days of paid cultural leave for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
workers to meet their cultural obligations. That Enterprise Bargaining
Agreement was recently negotiated by the South Australian Branch of
the AEU.
"There are many organisations in Australia that are getting better
in relation to their employment practices with Indigenous people," says
Russell.
"One of the reasons why we are embarking on this process is that one
of the greatest rights we have is the right to identify as an Indigenous
person and, stemming from this, the right to our cultural practices
and our cultural values and norms being accepted within the workplace."
"Some of the debate in the media last year featured commentary on Aboriginal
people 'shirking' their employment responsibilities by attending funerals
and sorry business," says Russell. "A view was put that it's about time
Aboriginal people learnt that they can't maintain their cultural practice
if they're going to be part of the mainstream economy. But at the end
of the day, why can't we? "Why is there not flexibility among employers
to say 'We have an issue with you taking six months extended leave for
cultural business, but can we negotiate around these so that we recognise
your right to your cultural practices and you recognise our right to
have someone on the job when we employ them.' It's a bit of give and
take," she says.
With education being the central plank of work readiness, the charter
also pushes for the recognition of prior learning and competencies.
"Many Indigenous workers come to the workforce with a set of skills
but without a formal qualification," says Russell. "Going through a
process to get their skills recognised means that any gaps can be determined
so they are then able to enter formal training in TAFE and enter into
a career pathway."
Once the ACTU's Indigenous Committee has drafted the charter, it will
be refined following consultation with Indigenous community groups and
unionists around the country. The charter will then be used to lobby
governments and companies to encourage them to review employment practices
and support structures for Indigenous workers and to highlight Indigenous
workers' rights in the political sphere.
It will also be used to help improve the employment practices of Indigenous
organisations themselves and to provide guidance for unions when negotiating
local agreements and memorandums of understanding.
The
contentious Community Development Employment Program (CDEP)
has about 32,000 participants across Australia. Designed as
a work-for-the dole scheme aimed at providing training and experience
and a transition into full-time work, the CDEP typically provides
just two days of work a week. CDEP participants who work longer
hours are paid top-up monies from other funding.
Many
CDEP participants, particularly in Australia's more remote areas,
often find themselves on CDEP for years, working without union
protection and without the benefits enjoyed by their full-time
permanent co-workers. Darcel Russell, AEU deputy federal secretary,
says that, within the education sector, CDEP participants work
as Aboriginal education workers, teachers' aides, tutors and
grounds keepers and many have been on CDEP much longer than
they should.
"In
some cases, CDEP has been used by governments as a substitute
for full-time employment. For example, one person in a remote
school had been employed on CDEP for 11 years working as a teacher's
aide. That person had no access to superannuation and no leave
entitlements," says Russell. "Education is not the only industry
where this employment injustice is being perpetuated," she says.
"In many communities, people employed under the CDEP scheme
are working in local government; as Aboriginal health workers;
and as community police. Funding is not made available to create
full-time permanent positions, in spite of the need being apparent.
In this way, CDEP becomes the end point for people rather than
a stepping stone or pathway to a better position." Russell says
the AEU will conduct an awareness campaign, particularly with
principal members, on what it means for CDEP participants to
be employed in a school. Governments must be held accountable
for entrenching such an inequitable form of employment practice
in their systems, and thus continuing the cycle of poverty and
disadvantage, she says.
Often
the program is a double-edged sword, as revealed in research
by Boyd Hunter, a research fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal
Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University.
In a paper examining the impact of the CDEP on labour force
participation, Hunter concluded that, while the scheme reduced
the high level of social exclusion among Indigenous workers
by giving them opportunities to participate in the labour market,
CDEP can encourage young Aboriginal people to leave school early
because they see it as an easy option.
The
federal government recently announced a raft of changes including
closing down CDEP in areas where there is a strong job market
as well as encouraging Indigenous teenagers to complete their
education.
The
past few years have not been good for Indigenous rights. Aside
from the Howard government's controversial scrapping of Indigenous
democracy and self-determination in the form of the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Commission, it has also actively
blocked the passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples in the UN. More than 20 years in the making, the declaration,
which would see Indigenous rights become an international human
rights standard, has been fiercely opposed by Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, the United States and Russia. The UN Declaration
on Indigenous Rights affirms that "Indigenous peoples are equal
in dignity and rights to all other peoples and recognises the
right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves
different and to be respected as such."
Les
Malezer, a member of the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander
Research Action, who has led Australia's involvement in developing
the UN Declaration, says the major sticking points for the Australian
government have been an article in the declaration dealing with
land and resources and another article that states that governments
should not enact legislation without the free, prior and formal
consent of the people concerned.
"You
can tell by the policies of this government-the abolition of
ATSIC and the winding back of the Native Title Act-that it is
essentially hostile to anything that will give Indigenous people
rights: the right to land, the right to have a cultural identity,
the right to our own organisations and the right to representation.
You name it, Howard's against it."
The
draft declaration is now at its umpteenth redrafting after facing
opposition from the African bloc countries concerned about the
differentiation between Indigenous and tribal peoples. Malezer
believes the current impasse will soon be resolved after informal
talks and is confident the declaration will be adopted by the
end of this year.
If
it is adopted as a human rights standard by the UN General Assembly
it will become, over time, part of what is called customary
international law. If it reaches the next stage to become a
UN convention or treaty, then member states will be required
to sign it. Malezer is hoping that, by that time, a more sympathetic
government will be in power.
The
long history of social injustice against Indigenous Australians
is mirrored by an equally long history of industrial injustice.
It was not until 1968 that the Australian Industrial Relations
Commission ruled that Indigenous Australians be paid wages
equal to their white colleagues. Only two years earlier, black
stockmen had walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern
Territory after decades of being paid only in basic goods.
Well into the 1970s, state governments, most notably Queensland,
retained the wages paid to Aboriginal workers.
Your say :
Daniel Greene, Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander federal conference delegate, ACT June Hawkes Aboriginal
education resource teacher, NSW DINY SLAMET is a freelance writer.
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