SMH
Unions gun for labour hire ring-ins
Date: 22/05/99
By HELEN TRINCA
The Australian Services Union is trying to strike agreements with
labour hire firms for members it doesn't yet have.
It is an alternative approach forced on unions in an age when they
are struggling to recruit members from an increasingly fragmented
labour market.
"We're trying to organise, but you strike problems in this area for
obvious reasons," Mr Brian Sullivan, the union's national executive
president, said yesterday. "People are scattered all over the city
and there is no consolidated workplace. For some unions it goes
against the grain dealing with the employer ahead of the employees,
but we believe we have to do it."
The union is trying to recruit members in one of the fastest growing
areas of labour hire - the phone call centres - where about 30 per
cent of workers are employed via labour hire firms.
The Recruitment and Consulting Services Association, which has 300
member companies in NSW, has been unmoved by the pressure. Instead,
the association wants the union to negotiate directly with the hire
companies.
Labour hire companies estimate they employ fewer than 2 per cent of
Australian workers but the sector has been growing at 16 per cent
each year since 1980.
The number of agency workers doubled in Australia between 1990 and
1995.
The labour hire firms now cover the so-called blue, white, pink and
gold collar workers - everything from manufacturing workers in blue
to to managing directors in gold class. Pink is for the clerical area
dominated by women and white covers professionals like information
technology workers. The industry has an annual turnover nationally of
$4.5 billion with about 40 per cent of that in NSW. The big unions,
such as the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, are
dismissive of the "body hire companies" and the CFMEU is pushing for
clauses in enterprise agreements to limit the use of these workers.
Mr John Buchanan, a researcher with Sydney University's Australian
Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training, says the
labour market is being reconfigured by outsourcing. Between 1990 and
1995, 35 per cent of employers had outsourced at least one function.
In the early 1980s, about two-thirds of workers were in companies of
100 workers or more, whereas a decade later this had dropped to about
50 per cent. The NSW Labor Council is campaigning to regulate
contractors and is behind a push to change laws so the State
Industrial Commission sets minimum rates for contractors and to
ensure that labour hire firms do not undercut other site workers. The
ideas are in a discussion paper from the NSW Industrial Relations
Department. The Premier, Mr Carr, dumped on the paper after it was
leaked to the Herald but this week, his office said he was ruling
nothing in or out. He just wants normal consultation to be followed.
The Labor Council secretary, Mr Michael Costa, says: "We're concerned
at the undermining of the notion of full-time employment. All of the
statistics show very clearly that full-time employment is declining
and one of the reasons is the artificial contracting to avoid the
employer-employee relationship." The NSW Employers Federation accused
the council of trying to turn back the clock but the labour hire
companies say they have no problem with paying the same money paid to
unionists on site, arguing they sometimes pay more already. The real
issue in this style of work is not so much money but job security.
But the trend is likely to be hard to break. Mr Jim Dingwall, a
management consultant with PA Consulting Group, said the European
experience showed that forcing labour hire firms to maintain parity
with site wages did not dampen the enthusiasm for outsourcing.
Employers were using contract workers for flexibility and to
implement cultural change in the workplace, not as a way of cutting
wages, he said.
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