International Employment Relations Network List
(IERN-L)
A Miscellany of International Employment Relations News
Miscellany 23, August 2012
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Contents
Main Stories
Australia: Wanted: 800,000 workers in five years
Australia: ACTU is up in arms against Fair Work review proposals
China: Worker protests on the rise in July
ILO: On course for decent shipping
Korea: Umbrella union claims Japanese firm violated OECD guidelines
Singapore: Prima affirms support for progressive wages
South Africa: COSATU Statement on SATAWU President`s Resignation
South Africa: COSATU condemns violence at Lonmin and breakaway ‘union’NATAWU
South Africa: Wives rage at brutality of Zuma’s police after ‘massacre’ of miners
UK: Tesco faces fines over migrant visa breaches
UK: Number of strike days hits 20-year high
In Brief
Australia: Business push to remove weekend penalty rates would cut take-home pay of working Australians
Australia: TWU supports bid to oust FAAA chiefs
Italy: FIAT: respinto ricorso. FIOM CGIL, ora riassumere i 145 operai Pomigliano
Korea: Unionists at Kumho Tire stage strike for higher wages
Philippines: Improving Working Conditions in Philippines EPZs
Singapore: Pay more for Indonesian maids from November
UK: Historic Trades Union Congress Library collection secured
USA: Houston janitors’ victory shows importance of collective bargaining
Opinion Pieces
Australia: Not too early to fix holes in Fair Work Act
Research
Publications
Calls for Papers, Conferences, Seminars, Symposia
Labour History
Other Sites
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Main Stories
AUSTRALIA
Australia: Wanted: 800,000 workers in five years
ER/Australia/Labour Market
The Australian, 13 August 2012 at
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/wanted-800000-workers-in-five-years/story-fn59niix-1226448737525
The Gillard government has been warned of a coming structural shift in the jobs market as demand grows for professional skills, offsetting the expected loss of another 85,000 manufacturing positions.
The government analysis, obtained by The Australian, is being taken to business executives to shape new policies aimed at increasing the labour supply in key service industries that show the strongest growth.
In a danger sign for workers with no training, the number of low-skill jobs is tipped to rise by barely 10,000 a year over the forecast period, making up just 7 per cent of all new jobs created.
A regional shift is forecast as Queensland outstrips other parts of the country in job-creation, adding 220,000 positions compared with about 190,000 in NSW, 180,000 in Victoria, 150,000 in Western Australia and 50,000 in South Australia.
Federal Employment Minister Bill Shorten received the analysis from his department last week, and is using it to start policy talks with executives in service industries, where demand for workers is greatest.
Mr Shorten is citing the figures to take aim at critics of the Fair Work Act, warning that employers will have to do more to attract the best staff.
"If the demand for skilled workers increases, the person with the skills is going to be able to choose the job they want," Mr Shorten told The Australian. "It makes the IR debate look very old-fashioned."
The forecasts lend weight to calls for education reforms to improve skills and boost productivity, as the Gillard government considers its response to the Gonski review of school funding, which suggests an extra $5 billion in public spending.
Countering assumptions about the source of new jobs, the findings show the service industries will need more workers than any other part of the economy, even as the resources sector continues to grow.
While mine companies will need about 100,000 new workers over the next five years, healthcare and social assistance employers will need 240,000 staff and professional services companies will require 110,000.
Education, tourism, retail and financial services will all create new jobs as the manufacturing sector shrinks.
"Employment growth for most states will be dominated by healthcare and social assistance, construction and professional, scientific and technical services industries," the report says. "In Western Australia, not surprisingly, mining is projected to provide the most new jobs."
The forecasts come with danger signs, as 19 of the 20 strongest job categories require qualifications higher than secondary school.
"The structural change in the Australian labour market and the significant shift towards higher skills occupations will limit the opportunities available to job-seekers without appropriate levels of qualification, work experience and employability skills," the analysis says.
Labor is hoping to turn the workforce debate to its advantage as it considers the first tranche of changes to the Fair Work Act in response to the review handed down earlier this month.
While business groups attacked the review for failing to address employer concerns about lost flexibility under the industrial relations regime, the government is planning to focus initially on technical amendments rather than the wider complaints.
One option is to introduce the first tranche of amendments in the spring session of parliament.
Mr Shorten commissioned the employment report from his department to start work on policies that would capitalise on the economic shift towards the services sector.
Factors behind the jobs trend include the ageing of the population, which is increasing the number of older people spending on services such as social assistance and healthcare.
The report attributes the shift to a change in consumer behaviour as a result of the global financial crisis, with household spending on consumer goods now offset by outlays on services.
"We're outsourcing the kitchen, we're outsourcing health services - so services are the brightest part of the future," Mr Shorten said.
The labour force would need to expand by making greater use of the existing population as well as relying on immigration, he said.
"We can cope with the demands, but we're going to have to rethink attitudes to hiring older people, we're going to need to encourage more women to work, we're going to need more people with disabilities in the workforce."
Mr Shorten said employers would have to overcome attitudes that discouraged some people from hiring workers from ethnic minorities.
"We're going to have to get more of our cab drivers into the office," he said. "Migration is part of the solution, but it's also about the under-utilisation of the migrants who are already here."
Labor has made technical education a major theme of its past two budgets, but has funded some of its initiatives by cutting outlays in other parts of the education portfolio, raising doubts about the net increase in funding for the sector.
Mr Shorten took aim at the Victorian government for slashing its TAFE budget.
"Cutting TAFE training is to productivity what burning books is to literacy," he said.
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Australia: ACTU is up in arms against Fair Work review proposals
IR/Australia/Fair Work Act/ strike ballot/greenfield arbitration/flexibility agreements/
The Australian, 13 August 2012 at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/actu-is-up-in-arms-against-fair-work-review-proposals/story-fn59niix-1226448747618
ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons has nominated four recommendations of the panel that unions will oppose in discussions with the Gillard government in coming weeks.
He said unions did not favour a panel recommendation that the Fair Work Act be changed to require that strike ballots only be issued after bargaining had started.
The panel acted in response to the long-running JJ Richards case, dubbed the "strike first, talk later" ruling after employers claimed the Transport Workers Union was able to apply to go on strike before bargaining had commenced.
But Mr Lyons said the strike action has occurred because the employer had refused to begin talks and changing the law would give employers a "strong incentive not to bargain".
Unions are also opposed to the panel push for arbitration of greenfield agreements, saying it was ironic that the proposal would benefit resource employers that had been strongly opposed to arbitration.
Mr Lyons said the proposal would result in big companies only, such as Qantas and Chevron, being able to access arbitration, not workers.
Unions supported a number of recommendations by the panel, including the move to stop workers being able to opt out of enterprise deals.
However, the ACTU will oppose the mandatory inclusion of a model clause providing for individual flexibility arrangements in agreements.
Mr Lyons said employers had proposed changes to the flexibility arrangements, including binding four-year terms, the right to offer them as a condition of employment, broad subject matter, and the ability for them to displace an award or collective agreements.
He said the employer pitch represented a return to John Howard's Australian workplace agreements.
The Australian Industry Group has also opposed a number of panel recommendations, including giving Fair Work Australia the power to arbitrate, at the request of unions or employers, over greenfield agreements.
It says employers incurred the cost risks on a project and it would be a retrograde step to allow the tribunal to set labour costs on application by unions.
Meanwhile, a dispute that threatened to lead to stand-downs in the car industry appeared close to settlement last night after conciliation talks before Fair Work Australia. DAIR Industries made an offer to workers that their union said was reasonable.
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China: Worker protests on the rise in July
IR/China/Strikes and protests
China Labour Bulletin, 7 August 2012 at http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/110106
The number of collective worker protests recorded by China Labour Bulletin in July increased by more than 40 per cent over the previous month. Against the backdrop of a slowly rebounding but still uncertain Chinese economy, workers in different sectors demanded pay increases, the payment of wage arrears, as well as compensation for factory relocations and closures.
Of the 37 strikes and protests added to CLB’s strike map in July, just about half (18 in total) occurred in the manufacturing sector and seven (all wage arrears cases) were in the construction sector.
Although 15 provinces and municipalities have increased their minimum wage this year, and consumer price inflation is gradually falling, workers’ demands for higher wages continue to be voiced through collective action. Workers in seven factories in Guangdong, Hubei, Hebei and Liaoning demanded pay increases, including around 1,000 workers at a Hong Kong-owned electronics factory in Foshan who successfully won a 200 yuan monthly bonus after staging a half-day strike. Workers pointed out that the monthly minimum wage in Foshan was only 1,100 yuan, compared with 1,500 yuan in nearby Shenzhen. Also, Hundreds of workers at Japanese-owned Hirose Electric blocked the factory gate while others staged a street demonstration in mid-July demanding a promised increase in their basic salary from 1,160 yuan to 1,300 yuan per month.
Wage arrears cases continued to be prominent in July despite some improvements in the property market and construction industry. Construction companies reportedly postponed or withdrew from projects due to a lack of financing or disputes with developers on project progress and material costs. Out of the seven wage arrears cases in the construction industry noted last month, five were related to state-owned construction companies. In particular, China Railways 15th Bureau Group was cited in two protests by workers at a train station construction project in Henan and a property development in Shaanxi.
The Chinese government made the malicious non-payment of wages a criminal offence last year but wage arrears remain rampant with only a small number of high-profile run-away bosses actually being charged so far. Indeed, there were three cases last month of small factory bosses in Guangdong and Shandong leaving town without paying workers’ salaries for several months.
As manufacturers continue to relocate part or all of their operations to inland provinces, conflicts with workers who prefer to remain in the coastal regions have gradually escalated. For example, about 100 young women workers at a Shenzhen subsidiary of American conglomerate Amphenol producing flash memory card sockets and adapters, demanded compensation after the company began to relocate production.
In other sectors too there were sporadic protests in transportation, logistics and catering, mainly related to wage arrears and retirement payments. Nearly 38 per cent of the worker protests last month led to negotiations with management, mostly after mediation or intervention by local government officials.
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ILO: On course for decent shipping
IR/Seafarers/Labour Standards
ILO, 20 August 2012 at http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/insight/WCMS_187659/lang--en/index.htm
Four years ago, when the ILO photographer visited the Port of Genoa in Italy, he also met a young seafarer, Ms Wang Chung-Hai. The young cadet broke many stereotypes.
Not only because she was one of the world’s 1-2 per cent female seafarers hoping to become one of the even rarer women officers or captains one day. Or because Chung-Hai’s pay is about five times the ILO minimum wage for seafarers.
She proudly showed the photographer her tidy and spacious cabin which she is allowed to share with her partner when she goes on shorter voyages in the Asian region. When her ship, the “Y M Orchid”, a 275 metre long recently built cargo ship operating under the flag of Panama, was inspected by the Italian port state control officer, it was found to be in perfect condition.
Not all seafarers are so lucky, as not all ships are so well-kept. Many seafarers face a more difficult, dangerous and dirty reality, working on unsafe ships that are not fit to sail.
In the same port of Genoa, the ILO photographer saw a ship that had been abandoned with its crew by the owner. Their salaries had not been paid for months and they did not know how to pay their trip back home. Although this was an extreme case, the ILO Database on Abandonment of Seafarers reports more than 100 similar cases since it was established in 2004.
The ILO’s Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC, 2006) states that shipowners must continue to pay seafarers’ wages until they are repatriated.
A seafarers’ bill of rights
The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (MLC, 2006), goes far beyond addressing the issue of wages at sea. It sets out seafarers’ rights to decent conditions of work on a wide range of subjects, including basic employment rights, improved enforcement of minimum working and living conditions and the right to make complaints both on board and ashore.
As the Convention applies to all ships, including those of non-ratifying Member States, it will be globally applicable and can be uniformly enforced.
The MLC, 2006, will come into force 12 months after ratification by 30 ILO member States, representing a total share of at least 33 percent of the world’s gross tonnage (gt) of ships. With the ratification of the Philippines and Russia, both conditions have now been met and even exceeded.