The Australian http://www.news.com.au/headlines/ Reith to trim IRC conciliation powers By MICHAEL BACHELARD Workplace relations writer 6may99 THE Howard Government will reduce the powers of the Industrial Relations Commission and further strip back awards as part of its second wave of industrial relations reforms, to be unveiled today. The Australian understands that Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith will introduce legislation to restrict a key power of the commission - the ability to order parties to go to compulsory conciliation. Under the changes, the commission will be able to order conciliation only on matters that are allowable under the award system. The changes will simultaneously pare the number of those allowable award matters from 20 to 16. But the changes to the commission are likely to be strongly opposed by the Australian Democrats in the Senate and the union movement. The Coalition Government will put new legislative emphasis on mediation before the commission and will set up a system to accredit industrial mediators. It believes these changes are inconsistent with the commission's present wide conciliation power. The changes also include further tightening of administrative arrangements in the commission. Under the new award-stripping provisions, the Government will move to legislate the abolition of union picnic days and leave for trade-union training, jury service and long service. It will also seek to remove the tally provisions in the meat-processing industry, under which workers are paid set rates for each carcass processed. Unions have opposed this reform in the past. The proposed changes will mean that the arduous award-simplification process, under which all awards must be modified to comply with the Workplace Relations Act, will have to be revisited. The Australian Industry Group, an employer lobby, recently criticised the first stage of the process for absorbing massive amounts of time and resources, with little tangible result in terms of the number of awards simplified. It is understood that even those awards already simplified under the first wave of changes will have to be reviewed under the latest changes. The Government will meet with unions and employer groups on Friday. It intends to table the legislation in the middle of the year and have it implemented by the end of the year. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
