Last week in the Senate Pauline and I negotiated with the Government to change new COVID regulations to protect workers rights .Yet when some MPs feel like they are losing relevance, they panic and spread misinformation to score cheap political points. These MP’s show they do not care about workers and are not honest. See for yourself. One Nation will always protect workers and workers’ rights
Transcript
Let’s set the record straight on a recent change to federal regulations to allow employers and employees to quickly amend an existing Enterprise Agreement to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and keep their business going and employing people. For businesses that are struggling to survive due to COVID-19, this allows employers to ask employees to vote on changes to an existing EA more quickly, in as short as 24 hours, rather than the normal seven days.
Unprecedented times call for flexibility for employers and employees. Now, we agree that some businesses need this and workers in those businesses understand. It was One Nation, though, that negotiated with the government to add the 12-month sunset clause, so that if employees agreed to amend their EA for COVID, all pay and conditions would return after 12 months. That’s fair.
Typically, Labor then spread the lie that these temporary changes with a shorter voting period would be permanent, when they’re not. Remember, the regulation does not force you to agree. If you lack adequate time to vote on it, you can vote no. So, to Labor’s Tony Burke and Joel Fitzgibbon, you have been caught lying to the workers you claim to represent.
Labor seems to hate that it was One Nation who negotiated with the government to improve the bill and made amendments to protect workers and workers’ rights. And I put on notice any employer that thinks of using COVID-19 to screw workers by taking advantage of new regulations when COVID-19 restrictions have not affected them.
In places like mines with 24-hour shift work, employers would be crazy to give only one day to vote because that would force some workers to come in to vote on their day off or after a long shift or night work. And workers who are annoyed would likely vote against the amended EA anyway. Anyway, as far as we know from listening to miners, COVID-19 is not affecting most mines’ operations.
Remember, the new regulation does not apply to voting on a new EA, only to changes to an existing EA. The regulation that is part of the COVID-19 response package only improves the flexibility for those businesses where employers and employees need a quick change to deal with COVID. We all know that life is about making choices, especially in politics where we face so many different people’s competing needs.
Quite often we have to choose between two difficult choices. On the one hand, the viability of employers to protect jobs, and on the other hand, protecting workers and workers’ rights. To make sure workers are protected, while giving employees and employers greater flexibility to negotiate changes quickly to keep people in work, One Nation added the 12-month sunset clause.
The government agreed and will change the regulation. That means that after 12 months, an EA with COVID changes returns back to the original conditions. This was done by One Nation to protect workers from employers, in case those employers later tried to make COVID changes continue forever. We are in unprecedented times, yet we will not let this pandemic be used as an excuse to drag this out any longer than it should.
One Nation identifies real issues and protects workers’ rights.
