{"id":8639,"date":"2016-06-28T16:57:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T06:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/?p=8639"},"modified":"2024-07-10T07:57:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T07:57:27","slug":"brendan-oconnor-australias-next-ir-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/2016\/06\/28\/brendan-oconnor-australias-next-ir-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Australia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next IR Minister?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor may yet be the new Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations should Labor end up forming government once the final outcome of the Federal election is decided. In a frank and revealing interview in the latest edition of Workplace Review<\/a><\/em>\u00c2\u00a0(Winter 2016, Vol 7 No 2<\/a>), he provides an insight into the personal influences and motivations that have led him to this point, and elaborates on Labor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies on a range of industrial relations issues.<\/p>\n

Taking action in the Fair Work Commission in support of penalty rates, cracking down on companies that fail to pay their employees properly, instituting a national licensing regime for labour hire companies, and enshrining paid domestic and family violence leave in the National Employment Standards, are some of the policies Mr O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor outlined.<\/p>\n

While critical of the Trade Union Royal Commission and the Government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposed re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), as exemplifying an anti-union agenda aimed at attacking working conditions, pay and the democratic rights of workers and others, he is emphatic that Labor wants to stamp out \u00e2\u20ac\u0153criminality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in unions and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

He says Labor intends using the full force of the law to achieve that end, including doubling penalties for serious contraventions of the law, and he lauds the construction industry watchdog set up by the previous Labor Government, the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate (FWBI), in comparison to the ABCC.<\/p>\n

Is there ambiguity in Labor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basic position on policing the building and construction industry?<\/p>\n

For O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor, the critical differences between Labor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and the Government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approaches would appear to lie in factors such as purpose, emphasis, reach.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not serious about cleaning up unions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said in reference to the Government. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just serious about trying to destroy unions so they can attack workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rights, their pay and conditions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

If you want to keep up-to-date with the people, practice, cases and trends that are making news in workplace relations, you can get your copy of\u00c2\u00a0Workplace Review<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Workplace Review<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0articles are available on request by\u00c2\u00a0completing the\u00c2\u00a0Individual Article Sale<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0order form\u00c2\u00a0and emailing it to\u00c2\u00a0tlranz.journal.orders@thomsonreuters.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor may yet be the new Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations should Labor end up forming government once the final outcome of the Federal election is decided. In a frank and revealing interview in the latest edition of Workplace Review\u00c2\u00a0(Winter 2016, Vol 7 No 2), he provides an insight into the personal influences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,161],"tags":[8252,8217,2327,8218,8253,8254,8255,8256,1936,8257],"class_list":["post-8639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journals","category-workplace-review","tag-criminality","tag-abcc","tag-australian-building-and-construction-commission","tag-brendan-oconnor","tag-fair-work-building-industry-inspectorate","tag-labour-hire","tag-national-employment-standards","tag-paid-domestic-and-family-violence-leave","tag-penalty-rates","tag-trade-union-royal-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}