Rio Tinto backgrounder 10

The RIO TINTO Campaign site

BACKGROUNDER No. 10

March 1998

ILO judgement: Howard's Workplace Relations Act breaches international law:

Rio Tinto implicated

A Committee of Experts from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the United Nations has found the Federal Government's Workplace Relation's Act (WRA) to be in breach of Australia's obligations under international law. ^[1] Rio Tinto executive, Mike Angwin, was seconded to the Federal Government for the specific purpose of helping to draft the WRA.

The ILO Committee found that key parts of the Federal (and some State) legislation are in breach of ILO Convention 98: Principles of the Right to Organise and to Bargain Collectively. The key finding of the ILO report is that the Federal Act promotes individual employment contracts over collective agreements. The report noted:

“The Committee concludes that primacy is clearly given to individual over collective relations through the AWA (Australian Workplace Agreement) procedure. The Committee considers that the provisions of the Act noted above do not promote collective bargaining as required under Article 4 of the (ILO) Convention."

The ILO also found that the Federal Act provides insufficient protection for union members engaging in protected action in pursuit of collective agreements. The Committee found that restrictions on protected action prevent union members engaging in the full range of union activities in pursuit of their interests. Further, the right of unions and employers to choose the level and type of agreement they want is also restricted under the Act. The WRA promotes single site or employer agreements and directs the Industrial Relations Commission to favour such agreements. The Committee found that this is “contrary to the principle of voluntary bargaining.”

The Committee also discovered problems with some of the industrial legislation enacted by State governments. For example,workplace legislation in Western Australia was found to provide no protection for union members engaged in union activities, and also gave primacy to individual employment contracts over collective bargaining.

The Federal Government must now advise the ILO as to what steps it will take to remedy the breaches. The union movement will monitor whether the process will include further involvement of staff on loan from corporations, such as Rio Tinto, which have aggressively promoted individual contracts over unions in their workplaces.

Footnotes

^[1] Findings of the Committee of Experts of the ILO, March 10, 1998.