This election will be a contest between two Avery different paths for our shared future as a nation.
 
Labor is determined to shape Australia’s recovery in the same spirit we got through the pandemic – together.
 
A recovery built on Australia’s greatest ethos: the fair go.
 
This Government stands in the way of the fair go.
 
It seeks to divide Australians rather than bring us together.
 
Labor’s mission – as represented in part by this Bill – is to bring Australians together with, in this case, a very straightforward concept: Same job, same pay.
 
Many labour hire firms across Australia operate in a fair way and exist for a good reason.
 
We have no issue with them.
 
But there are unscrupulous ones making a quick buck off the backs of working people, providing workers to major companies at lower wages than if the companies had hired them directly and therefore changing the competitive nature between companies within the one industry.
 
The truth is someone pays a price for this.
 
You end up with two Australians working side by side, doing the same hours and the same job, with the same qualifications – yet one gets paid less and has less security than the other.
 
For those women and men, work is unreliable, but their bills never are.
 
We know that casual workers in Queensland’s coal-mining industry are consistently earning less than their permanent colleagues – proving it’s a myth that casuals are getting paid their rightful loading.
 
If anyone benefits from double-dipping, it’s the companies and labour hire firms that indulge in these practices.
 
The company pays less for the work getting done so it can pad the bottom line and avoids the obligations of providing full-time work.
 
The labour hire firm takes its cut. Dollars are taken out of the wallets of everyday Australians and out of those communities.
 
It’s a rort that must end.
 
But while it is most common in the mining industry, it is more widespread.
 
It’s at the airport where a customer service officer employed directly by an airline on a permanent contract could be checking you in, while someone is checked in at the next counter by a casually employed labour hire worker, who doesn’t even know if they’ll be there the next day.
 
It’s happening in suburban libraries, in healthcare, aged care, disability care and manufacturing. Two workers doing the same thing. One with the benefit of a stable paycheck, an income they can count on to plan ahead, to buy a home, knowing they’ll be able to pay the bills.
 
The other with less income, less stability, less security.
 
The difference can amount to hundreds of dollars a week.
 
These firms exploit casual workers and undermine job security.
 
During COVID, they risk undermining public health.
 
And throughout it all, they undercut wages.
 
If you’re working for a labour hire company, chances are you’ll get as much as 40 per cent less than a permanent worker – even if that worker is doing the same job under the same conditions.
 
On this Government’s watch, a class of economic second-tier citizens is being cemented into place.
 
If you’re a casual, you don’t have annual leave. You don’t have sick leave. You don’t have job security.
 
And good luck if you want to get a home loan.
 
The problem of creeping casualisation and cowboy labour hire firms is affecting a growing number of industries and workplaces.
 
The Miners Union and the McKell Institute focused on the most prominent in a report titled: “Wage-cutting Strategies in the Mining Industry.”
 
Its subtitle is: “The cost to workers and communities”, which says it all.
 
Money is shifted to big businesses in big cities or overseas at the expense of regional communities.
 
As I said when I launched that report in Mackay, the scale on which miners are being ripped off through the casualisation of the workforce is a major problem.
 
It is the consequence of the weakness in our current workplace laws that let mining companies use outsourcing strategies to bypass union-negotiated enterprise agreements.
 
Money is being taken from families to fatten a bottom line.
 
Workers are losing the gains that were won over generations.
 
Many feel like their job is substandard. That they’re dispensable.
 
Without job security, they struggle to put down roots in their community, never knowing when they’ll have to move on.
 
And when it comes to workplace safety, they feel too scared to speak up.
 
This is what the Queensland Coal Mining Board of Inquiries said in May:
 
“There is a perception among coal mine workers that a labour hire worker or contractor who raises safety concerns at a mine might jeopardise their ongoing employment at the mine.”
 
That’s from their report into the explosion at the Grosvenor coal mine at Moranbah.
 
It is an unconscionable cost.
 
These dodgy practices are also loopholes exploited by bad employers to undercut workers’ wages — which the cowboy labour hire firms are cashing in on.
 
What do we see from this Government? We see from this Government spending taxpayers’ money to defend court cases, legal action, in the courts to overturn when courts have previously determined that these practices undermine permanent work and when these practices are inappropriate.
 
The fact is, particularly in highly unionised, well-paid sectors like mining it is effectively an exercise in busting the benefits of collective action that have been won over generations.
 
It cuts a chunk of the workforce out of the EBA conditions negotiated fairly and in good faith by workers and their unions with good employers.
 
The Prime Minister talks a big game about being on the side of miners and on the side of families.
 
But the truth is he joined with the labour hire firms in a high court case to maintain these rorts.
 
He wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to ensure the continued ripping off of casuals and their families.
 
He also teamed up with One Nation to pass IR changes that extinguish the rights of casual workers.
 
Under the government scheme passed earlier this year, employers can benefit from the certainty of a permanent worker – but they don’t need to give them the benefits of permanent work like sick leave or annual leave.
 
If workers want to be casuals, they can be.
 
For so many people it’s an important choice.
 
But it should be a real choice.
 
Flexibility must come with security, not at the expense of it. Flexibility must benefit workers as well as employers.
 
Only Labor understands these principles.
 
We know that flexibility and security can exist together.
 
Job stability is at the core of our plan to deliver more secure jobs, better pay and a fairer industrial relations system.
 
A Labor Government will write the principle of Same Job, Same Pay into law.
 
But we do not have to wait until then.
 
Just as JobKeeper grew out of calls from Labor and the union movement, together with employers, for wage subsidies during the pandemic, we can do this right now.
 
This is the chance for the LNP to put their votes where their mouths are and stand up for the people they purport to represent.
 
With this Bill, Labor will ensure that workers employed through labour hire companies don’t get ripped off.
 
Labor will uphold the principle that if you work the same job, you should get the same pay. It’s not complex.
 
We will legislate to ensure that workers employed through a labour hire company will not receive less pay than workers employed directly.
 
The use of temporary labour hire to help employers manage increased demand during surge periods or replace absent workers has been around for decades. This Bill will not disturb that business model that is important.
 
But a new business model has distorted the labour market and undermined enterprise bargaining.
 
We will crack down on companies trying to circumvent their obligations to pay their workers directly.
 
We will make sure on-hire workers are treated no less favourably than directly engaged workers.
 
We will remove barriers to career paths and secure employment opportunities for on-hire workers.
 
We see that the pandemic has given us an opportunity to shape a better future with stable jobs and secure incomes for all Australian workers and their families.
 
It means so much when families can plan ahead to buy homes.
 
It means so much when your job pays for your kid’s school shoes and fees and swimming lessons and covers the mortgage.
 
It means so much when you can plan to have a family based upon secure work going forward.
 
We in the Labor Party since 1891 have stood up for the fair go.
 
We’ve stood up for the rights of working people.
 
We don’t do what those opposite do which is to pretend to care about people in the mining sector but what they really mean is just overseas shareholders, that’s what they mean.
 
Not workers in the industry.
 
We believe in the fair go, and nothing says a fair go as simply as same job, same pay — a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
 
That’s built this country.
 
That is the fair go that a Labor government will deliver.
 
This opinion piece was first published in CQ Today on Wednesday, 24 November 2021.