Kelty slams push by ‘self-interested’ bosses to simplify awards

Bill Kelty says many employers calling for a simpler award system want to pay workers below the legal minimum.

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty. Picture: Aaron Francis

Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty says many employers calling for a simpler award system want to pay workers below the legal minimum, as the Morrison government slammed a rec­ord wages underpayment by Woolworths as “beyond hopeless”.

Mr Kelty, who was ACTU secretary from 1983 to 2000, said many employers were making a lot of excuses for not meeting their legal obli­gations.

“I have heard from day one as a union official employers say to me, ‘The award is very hard, it’s very hard to work’,” he told a La Trobe University forum on Thursday.

“It seems to me it’s not that hard — it just requires reading.

“There are a lot of good ­employers. There are a lot of bad employers in this country who don’t want to pay the award rate. Now unions are rightly fighting these people,” he said.

“If somebody comes along (and says) ‘I have got a great solution for you: make the award ­simple and we’ll actually reduce people’s entitlements so we don’t actually have this problem anymore’, I don't have a lot of excuses for these people. If you have committed to pay the award, pay it. The award rates are quite high in relative terms and there are some really good conditions but that’s the Australian system.”

Mr Kelty also criticised Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard over Labor’s Fair Work Act.

“What has happened since the GFC is the ability to bargain is less because the Labor Party did a terrible job when Gillard and Rudd were fixing the right to bargain,’’ he said.

“I love the Labor Party but if that’s the best they can do to ensure unions have a proper right to bargain, that was a terrible job they did.”

Meanwhile, Attorney-General Christian Porter said Woolworths’ record $300m under­payment of employees was “beyond hopeless”, backing criticism that the company’s conduct was emblematic of employers caring only about the interests of shareholders and making staff their least priority.

Mr Porter said employers had “rocks in their head” if they were not focused on wage compliance, given the government was devising legislation to criminalise “large, repetitive, knowing underpayments of wages”.

He said he had received a briefing from a senior Woolworths executive on Wednesday, who confirmed that uncovering the biggest underpayment on rec­ord was triggered by night-fill managers at the company’s super­markets finding out crew members they supervised to stack shelves were getting paid more than them.

“They are completely acknowledging they have made a very, very serious error,” he told 6PR radio in Perth on Thursday, adding he was not defending Woolworths’ conduct.

In an interview with The Australian on Wednesday, Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker attacked Woolworths for a completely unacceptable lack of transparency and accused major employers of putting the interests of shareholders above those of their workers.

Mr Porter backed her comments. “Good on her,” he said. “She's doing great work … I have absolutely no reason to diverge from any single one of her comments. Like, it’s just not good enough.”