IR changes

IR changes may not include parents' rights ruling. :

"The Federal Government is yet to decide whether it will include today's ruling by the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) in its new workplace relations legislation.

The IRC has found workers have the right to request an additional 12 months unpaid parental leave."

We have enjoyed some very good workplace relations for a long time and our willingness to work extra hours and put in that extra effort has been noted. This is not a co incidence. We had a lot of upheaval because workplace demands were counter productive and excluding the people who carry the work place....the workers. We then adopted a consultative, inclusive, co operative approach. People have discussed their needs. Employers and employees have talked about their requirements and then this has been sorted out in a logical, sensible fashion so that everyone has had a chance to understand what is going on. Now we have IR changes which are not consultative and may or may not require advertising campaigns to convince us wheras we now have a system we all understand and can interpret without the additional cost and burden of advertising. We had set up bodies deliberately to increase worker participation and acknowledge the fact they were human as well. Each worker has many roles and these change over the course of a lifetime. We were setting up the channels of discussion, the forums and the research bodies to ensure smooth, productive industrial relations which allowed for the human factor. Making changes which exclude workers or alienate them goes against what we had discovered was working really well. If people are restless and unhappy it is because the current IR changes are not being considered or brought in through the channels we had established. For us to look at the parenting issues and then consider those in a stable, well planned arena and then see that as being fruitless is, to say the least, disenchanting. The IRC is a pretty rock solid body. It makes its changes after a lot of research and deliberation. For it now to need permission and approval when it has been our arbitrating forum which we have appreciated and valued tells me the government which was elected to represent its voters considers itself as apart from our established workplace bodies. Workers, unions and employers have been a tripartide collaborative group on industrail relations and it has been working. Changes need to go through what is working. Creating confusion will destabilise something we have as an advantage.