ACTU television ads
The 2010 election will be a referendum on the rights of people to have job security and decent working conditions. Working Australians have a clear choice between the Coalition which brought in WorkChoices and Labor which restored rights and protected jobs during the Global Financial Crisis.
Tony Abbott was a key Minister in the former Howard Government that introduced WorkChoices. He believes in WorkChoices and wants to bring it back. He just won’t call it WorkChoices. He said it was one of the Howard Government’s greatest achievements.
Under WorkChoices, Australian workers faced the following cuts to their rights:
- Protection from being sacked unfairly was stripped away from more than three million workers
- Employers had the power to put workers onto AWA individual contracts that cut the award pay and conditions of employees
- The award safety net was effectively abolished and there were changes to the way minimum wages to drive down the pay of low income workers
- 70% lost shift loadings
- 68% lost annual leave loadings
- 65% lost penalty rates
- 49% lost overtime loadings
- 25% no longer had public holidays
