Protection of outworkers to come unstitched

Important state and federal protections for outworkers are threatened by the WorkChoices legislation.

Fair Wear spokesperson Miya Yoshitani said without all the existing protections for outworkers in both federal and state legislation, the Clothing award clauses being retained will become useless.

WorkChoices will override the "deeming provisions" in the states, which currently protect the status of outworkers as employees and therefore ensure their entitlement to award wages and conditions.

Ms Yoshitani said when Fair Wear met with the Minister he confirmed the Federal Government does not intend to replace the state protections with a federal deeming provision. Outworkers will be treated under law as independent contractors.

Ms Yoshitani said outworkers would have to negotiate payments without protection of a minimum wage, essentially legalising exploitative conditions as they can "freely" enter into contracts for $3 to $4 an hour.

Fair Wear is calling on the Federal Government to retain all the specific outworker legislation (and the full protections they contain) in each state, introduce parallel federal protections and ensure the full implementation of the Federal award provisions are not compromised by other elements of the WorkChoices legislation.

Ms Yoshitani said experts who have been following the development of the legislation expect that the protections WorkChoices does not override now will be incorporated into separate independent contractor legislation to be introduced into parliament later this year or early 2006.

She said the Government says the independent contractor legislation aims to "protect the status of independent contractors and support the right of people to make a choice about their working arrangements".

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Last Modified: 17 Nov 2005