The federal attorney general, Christian Porter, has described the Victorian government’s plan to introduce paid sick and carer’s leave for casual and insecure workers as “a business and employment-killing approach”.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced before Tuesday’s state budget that $5m would go towards designing a “secure work pilot scheme” to provide up to five days of sick and carer’s pay at the national minimum wage for casual or insecure workers in priority industries. Priority industries will be those with high rates of casual workers, such as cleaners, hospitality staff, security guards, supermarket workers and aged care staff.
“This isn’t going to solve the problem of insecure work overnight but someone has to put their hand up and say we’re going to take this out of the too-hard basket and do something about it,” Andrews said.
Porter said the federal government recognised “the myriad challenges with our industrial relations system highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic” but the Victorian proposal “raises a number of major issues”.
“The central problem with the Victorian proposal is it seems to start with a small, government-funded pilot and intends to finish with what would be a massive tax on Victorian businesses, who would be forced to pay for both a 25% additional loading in wages to compensate for casuals not receiving sick leave and then having to pay for an industry levy to fund sick leave as well,” he said.
“After Victorian businesses have been through their hardest year in the last century, why on earth would you be starting a policy that promises to finish with another big tax on business at precisely the time they can least afford any more economic hits?”
Porter said a better approach would be to strengthen the ability of workers to choose to move from casual to permanent full-time or part-time employment, something that has been under discussion in the industrial relations working group.
“It must surely be a better approach to let people have greater choice between casual and permanent employment than forcing businesses to pay a tax so that someone can be both a casual employee and get more wages as compensation for not getting sick leave – but then also tax the business to pay for getting sick leave as well,” he said.
“That would be a business and employment-killing approach.”
As Victoria was in lockdown and about to face the peak of its second wave of Covid-19, people working multiple jobs and moving between workplaces were identified as a driver of virus spread. Some people were continuing to work while awaiting test results, or while recovering from the illness, because they could not afford to call in sick, with no entitlements to paid leave. It prompted the state government to introduce in July a $300 hardship payment for people unable to access sick leave while awaiting test results.
In August Andrews told reporters: “This issue of insecure work, this pandemic, has exposed just how fragile the financial arrangements and employment arrangements of hundreds of thousands of Victorians are.
“It’s no good for public health. It’s no good for much at all, actually.”
Statistics provided to the federal government in May revealed there were more than 2.6 million casual workers in Australia in August 2019, accounting for 24.4% of all employees.
Labor’s federal industrial spokesman, Tony Burke, said the plan for Victoria was “in stark contrast with the inaction of the Morrison government”.
“The Andrews Labor government is stepping up to protect some of our lowest paid and most vulnerable workers,” Burke said.
“But Scott Morrison still doesn’t seem to get that insecure work is a problem in Australia. Once again, the states have been forced to act because Mr Morrison and Christian Porter have failed to do so.”
