Des Houghton: 2.5m Qld workers to lose workplace health and safety protections

A controversial Bill that sneaked into State Parliament late last year will, in my opinion, limit Queenslanders’ equal access to the law, leaving 2.5 million of them without workplace health and safety protections, writes Des Houghton.

A Parliamentary hearing has been told that 2.5 million Queensland workers are about to lose their workplace health and safety protections in a move to strengthen registered Labor unions that fund the ALP.

A Bill before Parliament seeks to tweak laws that I believe will rob workplace health and safety representatives in independent unions of the powers to represent workers in health and safety matters.

In my opinion it is a terrible attack on workers who face financial hardship if they find themselves ensnared in health or safety matters.

It means 87 per cent of Queensland’s workforce will have to pay thousands of dollars for a lawyer for representation should they become embroiled in a health or safety issue. In my view, workers who choose to belong to an independent union are being discriminated against. So, too, are tens of thousands who choose not to be in any union.

It’s bizarre. It appears the Miles government is seeking to turn the workforce into a union collective, and to hell with those who object.

Is it not a basic human right to be treated equally before the law, irrespective of whether you’re in a registered or independent union?

It appears the Miles government is seeking to turn the workforce into a union collective. Picture: NCA NewsWIRE / John Gass

The move is shrouded in secrecy. The Bill was slipped quietly into the House in the dying days of Parliament late last year and follows recommendations from an expert panel that withheld the names of people who made submissions and what they said. Worryingly, the new laws also seek to expand the powers of the unions in demanding work stoppages for alleged safety breaches.

Industrial Relations Minister Grace Grace told Parliament the Work Health and Safety Act review was conducted by three independent reviewers: Craig Allen, former deputy director-general of the Office of Industrial Relations; Charles Massy, a barrister specialising in industrial relations and employment law; and Deirdre Swan, former deputy president of the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.

“A total of 51 written submissions were received,” the trio wrote in their report. “Stakeholders who provided submissions included employer and industry representatives, registered unions, legal representative associations, government departments, businesses and individuals.

“All submissions were treated as confidential. Where the content of a particular submission is referenced in this report, the authors have not been identified.” Why?

Grace told the House the review panel recommended changes to strengthen the operation of the health and safety representative framework. “It does this by clarifying and better integrating the role of the health and safety representative in the workplace,” she said. “The bill requires employers to be proactive in supporting the formation of work groups and the election of health and safety representatives.’’

Explanatory notes tabled in Parliament made it appear the aim was to crush the independents.

“To achieve its policy objectives, the Bill will amend the Workplace Health and Safety Act (in) excluding other entities such as: associations of employees or independent contractors; other entities that represent or are purporting to represent the industrial interests of the worker; entities that demand or receive a fee from such bodies; and individuals connected with excluded bodies. Excluding associations of employees or independent contractors which are not registered unions …”

Graham Haycroft Picture: Des Houghton

Member for Southern Downs James Lister says the ALP will leave workers in a precarious place.

“This Bill is another naked move by the Labor Party to reward their financial and political benefactors in the old trade union movement,” Lister told me, speaking as an MP, and not as an Education, Employment and Training committee member.

“It also seeks to disadvantage members of the likes of the Nurses’ Professional Association of Queensland, and the Teachers’ Professional Association of Queensland, and other independent unions, whose better service and cheaper fees have seen thousands
of members ditch the ALP-affiliated unions.’’

Lister said Queensland workers were happier being represented by independent unions and associations “without seeing their hard-earned dollars being handed to Labor by traditional ALP-affiliated unions”.

He added: “I think this bill will disadvantage millions of Queensland workers, whose workplace health and safety would be entrusted to a monopoly of union bosses, instead of as now where employees have freedom of choice.’’

Graeme Haycroft, the creator of the key independent unions that won’t align with the ALP, said the new law especially disadvantaged nurses and teachers.

“The Bill seeks specifically to deny representation to all workers on workplace health and safety matters except those who are current or existing members of a registered trade union,” he said in evidence to the Parliamentary hearing.

“It is really about the denial of equal access to justice.

“Those who contribute to the ALP supporting unions get it; those who do not in practice cannot access it.’’

Haycroft is chief of the Red Union Support Hub, the umbrella organisation for independent unions.

“This bill seeks to deny equal access to the law,” he said.

“There were 2,879,746 employed workers in Queensland as at last December. There were 371,815 members of registered unions.

“This Bill effectively says that the only way you can access workplace health and safety legislation protections is by being an existing member of a registered trade union.

“This means that those 2.5 million workers who are not members of these registered trade unions cannot access the workplace health and safety legislation.

He added: “What happened to the ALP being the political party of the worker, and 2.5 million of the workers in Queensland are now going to be denied access to the full protection?

“The only workers the ALP seem to want are those who are prepared to fund the ALP.’’

Haycroft also questioned the higher fees charged by the Labor-linked Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union and the Queensland Teachers’ Union. The members of his independent unions paid $450.

“By comparison, the QNMU charges $762. ”

“We believe that if the Red Union had 60,000 nurses, we would be able to deliver the service profitably for about $200 per annum …

“Yet the QNMU charges $762.’’

He sees the new laws as “an attempt to punish the nearly 15,000 nurses and teachers who have already left a registered union because they did not want to contribute their membership money to the ALP.”

He added: “It should be a free choice. Let the worker decide who represents them. “If they want to pay more and have money go to the ALP, great. If they do not, they can join something else or not join anything.”

Des Houghton, a former editor of The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail, is a media consultant who has previously worked as an advisor for the NPAQ