Sydney Letter / Pádraig Collins: WorkChoices, Australia's new industrial relations code, came into effect last Monday. Unions see the code as the most stringent collection of regulations ever seen; to less scrupulous employers they are offer a carte blanche to hire and fire at will.
Not content with mangling the English language with its name, WorkChoices also runs to an energy-sapping 2,557 pages. Unions say the devil really is in the detail, while some employers have found it such sweet reading they are already putting it into practice.
The concept of unfair dismissal has been done away with for companies employing fewer than 100 people, which covers most private sector employees.
Australia's minimum wage of $12.30 (€7.25) is staying (for the moment - a review is imminent), but this can now be averaged out over a year. If a person is paid $9.30 an hour now with the promise of $15.30 an hour later in the year, there is nothing to stop an employer from firing the employee before making up the difference.
Overtime will also become a thing of the past with hours averaged out over the year.
The new regulations criminalise what has previously been legitimate union activity and include fines of $6,000 for an individual and $33,000 for a union for certain specified "offences".
Some union leaders have already said they will not be dissuaded from doing what they have always done.
Australian Congress of Trade Unions secretary Greg Combet said: "I am not going to be intimidated from trying to protect people from unfair treatment - that's our job, even though it's being made illegal. I for one will not be paying fines for doing it."
WorkChoices has already been put into effect around the country.
In Melbourne, construction workers were sacked as permanent employees and immediately re-employed as casuals on lower wages, with no overtime benefits and no paid annual leave, sick leave or public holidays. They will each be out of pocket by about $20,000 a year.
In Queensland, a hotel housekeeper was fired from her full-time job and put on the roster as a casual at a lower hourly rate.
Workplace Relations minister Kevin Andrews says the opposition Labor Party and unions are scaremongering.
"Look, people are dismissed every day of the year. There's not something new about this . . . There are some relationships that don't work out and that's the reality and I think we all know that," he told ABC radio.
Stephen Jones, national secretary of one of Australia's biggest unions, the Community and Public Sector Union, sees it differently. "Employers will be less accountable for their actions, their decisions and the way they treat their employees," he told The Irish Times.
"Matters that were once subject to negotiation will now be unilaterally determined and there will be a downward pressure on wages and conditions.
"The majority of our members, like the majority of Australians don't support these changes. They are not good for families, the economy or the country."
Mr Jones does not see the government backing down on WorkChoices and is looking ahead to Australia's next federal election, expected in about 18 months. "The only thing that will change these laws is a change of government. Unions are already starting to campaign to bring this about.
"The coalition government assumed that with union membership at 22 per cent we didn't have the support, but union membership has grown by 4 per cent since these laws were announced," he said.
Labor leader Kim Beazley said in parliament that workers were starting to feel the new law's damaging effects. "The termites are now at work, slowly eating away at the foundations of living standards for working Australians," he said.
The government claims the new legislation will increase employment and wages and reduce industrial red tape.
However, this has been disputed from some surprising quarters. A group of 151 academics lodged a joint 43-page submission to a senate inquiry before the legislation was enacted.
It said WorkChoices would increase, not reduce, complexity; force down minimum standards; widen inequality in the labour market and curtail internationally recognised employee rights.
Even the HR Nicholls Society, an ultra-conservative think tank which staunchly supports deregulating the industrial relations system, dismissed WorkChoices, saying it gives the government sweeping powers to monitor every workplace in the country.
Society president Ray Evans said: "It's rather like going back to the old soviet system of command and control, where every economic decision has to go to some central authority and get ticked off . . . I don't believe the Howard government is that keen on freedom. This new legislation is all about regulation."