Prime Minister John Howard will today outline formal assurances that workers earning up to $75,000 per year who trade away penalty rates, shift allowances, holiday pay or overtime in AWAs will not be worse off. He said the changes under a new fairness test would take effect from next week.
"The application of a fairness test will ensure that people aren't worse off," Mr Howard saidOpposition industrial relations spokeswoman and Deputy Leader Julia Gillard said Mr Howard spent every day of the last year defending WorkChoices.
"This is just a short-term political manoeuvre from a desperate, desperate man and the day after the election he will go back to what he truly believes in and that is his WorkChoices laws and their ability to drive the wages and conditions of Australian working families down," Ms Gillard said on ABC radio.
"No one in this country should believe that a re-elected Howard Government will keep any of these changes. Then it will be back to business as usual letting workers get ripped off."
ACTU president Sharan Burrow also believed the plan was more about Mr Howard's job than the jobs of working Australians.
"You can still be dismissed unfairly, the boss can still say: `Sign that contract or you don't get the job' ... There will be no mandate or test of compensation so it could be anything," Ms Burrow said on Sky News.
"There doesn't appear to be any guarantees to us. We have a couple of bodies renamed but no arbitral powers and, of course, no collective bargaining rights.
"So you put it all together and I really think it's a bit of desperation on John Howard's part, because working Australians are so opposed to these laws."
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