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Australia - Compensation & Benefit Legislation

CAPITAL

Canberra

 

CLIMATE

Generally arid to semiarid. Australia is temperate in the south and the east but tropical in the north.

 

LANGUAGES

English and Australian native languages.

 

LEGAL SYSTEM

Based on English common law; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction, with reservations.

 

CURRENCY

Australian Dollars (1 USD = 1.93476 AUD as of March 1, 2002)

 

AUSTRALIA - COST-OF-LIVING

ERI's Relocation Assessor is a recommended source for cost-of-living data.

 

AUSTRALIA - EMBASSY/CONSULATES

U.S. Embassy at Canberra

Australian Capital Territory and Queanbeyan

Moonah Place

APO AP 96549

Yarralumala, Australian Capital Territory 2600

Telephone: [61] (02) 6270-5000

Fax: [61] (02) 6214-5970

http://www.usis-australia.gov/

 

New South Wales and Queenland

American Consulate General

Level 59, MLC Centre

19-29 Martin Place

Sydney, New South Wales 2000

Telephone: (02) 973-9200

 

Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory

American Consulate General

553 St. Kilda Road

Melbourne, Victoria 3004

Telephone: (03) 9526-5900

 

Western Australia

American Consulate General

16 St. Georges Terrace

Perth, Western Australia 6000

Telephone: (08) 9231-9444

 

Embassy of Australia at Washington D.C.

1601 Massachusetts Avenue N.W.

Washington D.C. 20036

Telephone: (202) 797-3000

Fax: (202) 797-3168

http://www.austemb.org

 

AUSTRALIA - HOLIDAYS

 

Note: Nationwide national holidays only. There are numerous individual State holidays.

 

AUSTRALIA - MINIMUM AGE

There is no federally mandated minimum age of employment, but state-imposed compulsory educational requirements, which are enforced by state educational authorities, effectively prevent most children from joining the work force until they are 15 or 16 years of age. Federal and state governments monitor and enforce a network of laws, which vary from state to state, governing the minimum school-leaving age, the minimum age to claim unemployment benefits, and the minimum age to engage in specified occupations.

 

(Section 6.d. Status of Child Labor Practices and Minimum Age for Employment, Australia - Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)

 

AUSTRALIA - MINIMUM REMUNERATION

Although a formal minimum wage exists, it has not been relevant in wage agreements since the 1960's. Instead, 80 percent of workers are covered by differing minimum wage rates for individual trades and professions; all are sufficient to provide a decent standard of living for a worker and family.

 

(Section 6.e. Acceptable Conditions of Work, Australia - Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)

 

AUSTRALIA - REMUNERATION

ERI's Geographic and Salary Assessors are recommended sources for international remuneration covering 189 countries.

 

AUSTRALIA - REPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES (2001, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE)

 

Section 6 Worker Rights

 

a. The Right of Association

 

The law provides workers, including public servants, freedom of association domestically and internationally, and workers exercise this right in practice. The law also provides for employers to join employer associations. In August 2000, a Bureau of Statistics survey indicated that union membership had declined to 25 percent of the workforce.

 

Unions carry out their functions free from government or political control, but most local affiliates belong to state branches of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). Union members must make up at least 50 percent of the delegates to ALP conferences, but unions do not participate or vote as a bloc.

 

Legislation that went into force in 1994 legalized what had always been an implicit right to strike. The 1996 Workplace Relations Act significantly restricted the right of workers to take industrial action by confining it to the period of bargaining, where it remains a protected action. Protected action provides employers, employees, and unions with legal immunity from claims of losses incurred by industrial action during the formal period of bargaining over a new enterprise agreement. In April 1999, a union in federal court successfully challenged this provision. In its decision, the court refused to grant an injunction against the union for taking industrial action outside of a bargaining period because it was in support of maintaining existing wages and conditions. Associated legislative changes to the Federal Trade Practices law provided companies with resort to legal action if they were subject to secondary boycott action.

 

The Federal Workplace Relations Act contains curbs on union power, restrictions on strikes, and an unfair-dismissal system. Several unions have objected to the law on the grounds that it allegedly violates the right to assembly provided for in several ILO conventions that the Government has signed. The primary curb on union power is the abolition of closed shops and union demarcations. This provision could create many small and competing unions at the enterprise level, but thus far there have been few changes in existing union structures. In 1999 a union used the act's provisions to withdraw from its larger union structure. Only one enterprise union has been registered under the provisions of the act, the Ansett Pilots Association in December 1999.

 

The restrictions on strikes include heavy fines for labor unrest during the life of an agreement and tougher secondary-boycott provisions. The unfair-dismissal system further limits redress and compensation claims by employees.

 

In January a federal court ended a long-running dispute between the BHP mining company and iron ore miners in the Pilbara region of Western Australia by ruling that BHP could offer workers individual employment contracts as an alternative to collective bargaining agreements (see Section 6.b.). During the year, the most notable industrial action was a strike in August by manufacturing workers in the western part of Sydney against a small but essential automotive parts firm, Tri-Star Steering and Suspension. The workers struck after Tri-Star management refused to accept a clause in a proposed enterprise agreement requiring contributions to Manusafe, a union-controlled trust fund established to safeguard employees' annual leave and long service leave entitlements. The dispute closed several of the country's automobile manufacturers; it ended 2 weeks after the Industrial Relations Commission ordered the termination of the bargaining period, thereby forcing the workers to return to work. The manufacturing workers' union vowed to continue its campaign for accumulated employee entitlements to be paid into Manusafe. During the year, the national union federation, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, also campaigned to increase the minimum wage, to establish a new benchmark for weekly working hours, (especially as related to mandatory overtime), and to protect employee entitlements in the face of numerous company collapses. Laws and regulations prohibit retribution against strikers and labor leaders, and they are effectively enforced. In practice employers tend to avoid legal remedies, for example, secondary boycott injunctions, that are available to them in order to preserve a long-term relationship with their unions.

 

In March 2000, the ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association recommended substantial changes to the Workplace Relations Act and the Trade Practices Act following an examination of complaints of antiunion discrimination raised by Australian and international trade unions over the Government's role in a 1998 labor dispute involving stevedores. Specifically, the ILO recommended that the Government amend the Workplace Relations Act to eliminate the linkage between restrictions on strike action and legal provisions on interference with trade and commerce. The ILO also criticized the Government's use of serving defense force personnel as replacement workers in the 1998 strike. The Government stated in response to the recommendations that the ILO's comments "reflect an inadequate understanding of Australian law." The Government rejected all of the ILO's recommendations.

 

The stalled negotiations on the issue of union involvement in the workplace between iron ore workers and the BHP mining company ended with a federal court decision in January permitting a company to offer individual contracts to workers (see Section 6.b.). The Bureau of Statistics reported 680 industrial disputes for 2000-01, down 6 percent from the previous year; over the same period, workdays lost due to strikes fell by 21 percent to 393,000.

 

Unions may form and join federations or confederations freely, and they actively participate in international bodies. However, in March 2000, the ILO's Committee on Freedom of Association also recommended that the Government take measures, including amending legislation, to ensure that in the future trade union organizations are entitled to maintain contacts with international trade union organizations and to participate in their legitimate activities. The Government rejected this recommendation.

 

b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

 

The law at all levels (federal, state, and territories) provides workers with the right to organize and bargain collectively, and the law protects them from antiunion discrimination; the Government respects these rights in practice. However, in Western Australia, the 1997 Labour Relations Legislation Amendment Act amended several pieces of legislation, stripping workers of some protections against discrimination for trade union activities. Although workers cannot be fired for belonging to a union, laws permit individual employment contracts that override awards systems established through collective bargaining and impose complicated prestrike ballot requirements.

 

At a federal level, the negotiation of contracts covering wages and working conditions has shifted from the centralized awards system of the past to enterprise-level agreements that are certified by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC). In 2000-01, the AIRC certified 8,409 enterprise agreements, which was an increase of 52 percent from the number certified in 1997-98. The federal, state, and territorial governments administered centralized minimum-wage awards and provided quasi-judicial arbitration of disputes, supplemented by industry-wide or company-by-company collective bargaining. The Workplace Relations Act also provides for the negotiation of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA's) between employers and individual workers. These agreements are subject to far fewer government regulations than the awards. At present the AWA's are required to be roughly equivalent to basic working conditions in the award that would apply to the sector to which the firm belongs. The Office of the Employment Advocate reports that 194,815 AWA's have been filed since March 1997, covering 3,609 employers. In March 2000, the ILO recommended that the Government amend legislation so that workplace agreements do not undermine the right to bargain collectively; the Government rejected this recommendation. In January a federal court ruled that the BHP mining company could offer individual employment contracts with superior conditions (as compared to workers covered by collective bargaining agreements) to iron ore miners in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The court ruled that workers could not be compelled to accept the individual work agreements, and unions retained the right not only to represent employees who supported collective bargaining but also those who elected to accept an individual work agreement. This decision ended a long running dispute between BHP, which had refused to negotiate a collective agreement, and the iron ore miners.

 

There are no export processing zones. The Darwin Trade Development Zone, Northern Territory, attempts to increase exports via a geographically defined free trade zone. In practice the Darwin initiative is focused almost exclusively on its Asian neighbors to the north and west.

 

c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

 

Although there are no federal laws prohibiting it, forced labor, including forced and bonded labor by children, generally is not practiced. While there were such instances in the past, there were no reports of this activity during the year. There were infrequent press reports of trafficking in women in the textile, clothing, and footwear industries, sometimes as bonded labor (see Section 6.f.). This limited problem usually involves ethnic minorities in small operations in their homes. Trafficking in persons, particularly in women (but also children) for the sex trade, is a limited problem (see Sections 5 and 6.f.).

 

The country has ratified ILO Conventions 29 (1932) and 105 1960) on the abolition of forced labor, and government officials effectively enforce the law.

 

d. Status of Child Labor Practices and Minimum Age for Employment

 

There is no federally mandated minimum age of employment, but state-imposed compulsory educational requirements, which are enforced by state educational authorities, effectively prevent most children from joining the work force until they are 15 or 16 years of age. Federal and state governments monitor and enforce a network of laws, which vary from state to state, governing the minimum school-leaving age, the minimum age to claim unemployment benefits, and the minimum age to engage in specified occupations.

 

The country has not ratified ILO Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor.

 

Federal law does not explicitly prohibit forced and bonded labor by children, but such practices generally are not known to occur, although there have been instances of such abuses in past years (see Sections 6.c. and 6.f.). As a result of the discovery in April 1999 of children working in several clothing sweatshops in Sydney and Melbourne, the Attorney General's Department stated that it would study existing laws and consider whether new legislation would strengthen the Government's ability to combat the problem. The federal Government took no action on this problem during the year; however, the state governments of Victoria and New South Wales enacted legislation to strengthen protections for children in the workplace. In November the Victoria state government substantially raised fines for child labor abuses within the state.

 

Most cases of abuses in the last several years have involved members of ethnic communities from nations where child labor is not uncommon.

 

Anecdotal evidence suggests that children, mainly from Asia, are being trafficked into the country as sex workers, but the number is unknown.

 

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

 

Although a formal minimum wage exists, it has not been relevant in wage agreements since the 1960's. Instead, 80 percent of workers are covered by differing minimum wage rates for individual trades and professions; all are sufficient to provide a decent standard of living for a worker and family.

 

Most workers are employees of incorporated organizations. For them a complex body of government regulations, as well as decisions of applicable federal or state industrial relations commissions, prescribe a 40-hour or shorter workweek, paid vacations, sick leave, and other benefits. The minimum standards for wages, working hours, and conditions are set by a series of "awards" (basic contracts for individual industries). Some awards specify that workers must have a 24 or 48 hour rest break each week while others specify only the number of days off per number of days worked.

 

Federal or state occupational health and safety laws apply to every workplace.

 

The law provides federal employees with the right to cease work without endangering their future employment if they believe that particular work activities pose an immediate threat to individual health or safety. Most states and territories have laws that grant similar rights to their employees. At a minimum, private sector employees have recourse to state health and safety commissions, which investigate complaints and demand remedial action.

 

Labor law protects citizens, permanent residents, and migrant workers alike. Migrant worker visas require that employers respect these protections and provide bonds to cover health insurance, worker compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, and other benefits. Reports of abuse of foreign workers generally refer to migrant permanent residents who perform work in their homes in the clothing and construction industries.

 

f. Trafficking in Persons

 

Legislation enacted in late 1999 targets criminal practices associated with trafficking, and other laws address smuggling of migrants. Trafficking in persons from Asia, particularly women (but also children), is a limited problem that the Government is taking steps to address. The Government's response to trafficking in persons is part of a broader effort against "people smuggling," defined as "illegally bringing non-citizens into the country." Smuggling of persons--in all its forms--is prohibited by the Migration Act, which calls for penalties of up to 20 years imprisonment. In September Parliament also enacted the Border Protection Act, which authorizes the boarding and searching of vessels in international waters, if suspected of smuggling of persons.

 

The country is a destination for trafficked women and children. In June the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC), an agency of the Attorney General's Department, issued a report entitled Organized Crime in People Smuggling and Trafficking to Australia, which observed that the incidence of trafficking appears to be low. The Government, NGO's, and journalists agree that a number of women, and some children, are being trafficked into the country each year, but they are unable to provide reliable estimates concerning the scope of the problem. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have determined that women and children from Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, and parts of the former Soviet Union have been trafficked into the country. They are believed to be entering primarily via air with fraudulently obtained tourist or student visas, for purposes of prostitution. There also have been reports of women trafficked into the country from Afghanistan and Iraq. The high profit potential combined with factors such as the difficulty of detection, unwillingness (or inability) of witnesses to testify in investigations, apparently short stays in the country by workers in the sex trade, and previously low penalties when prosecuted have contributed to the spread of groups engaged in these activities. There also has been anecdotal evidence of trafficking in women to work in sweatshops in textile, clothing, and footwear industries as well as in service industries, sometimes as bonded labor.

 

AUSTRALIA - SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security Office of International Programs:

 

http://www.ssa.gov/SSA_Home.html

 

AUSTRALIA - STANDARD WORKWEEK

Most workers are employees of incorporated organizations. For them a complex body of government regulations, as well as decisions of applicable federal or state industrial relations commissions, prescribe a 40-hour or shorter workweek, paid vacations, sick leave, and other benefits. The minimum standards for wages, working hours, and conditions are set by a series of "awards" (basic contracts for individual industries). Some awards specify that workers must have a 24 or 48 hour rest break each week while others specify only the number of days off per number of days worked.

 

(Section 6.e. Acceptable Conditions of Work, Australia - Report of Human Rights Practices, 2001, U.S. Department of State.)