90 day fire-at-will laws for workplaces that don't want them

Media Release

10 January 2011

90 day fire-at-will laws even for workplaces that don't want them

Government orders from the State Services Commission that public servants and government-employed workers should be forced to accept 90 day fire-at-will provisions are bizarre says TEU national secretary, Sharn Riggs.

"Our members successfully and peacefully negotiated a number of employment agreements last year that deliberately protected them from the government's 90 day fire-at-will law," said Ms Riggs.

"We did what a union should do – worked constructively with employers to reach agreements that benefit both our members and the employers they work for. The employers didn't particular want these fire-at-will provisions and our members definitely don't want them."

"Now, in its efforts to introduce punitive and mean-spirited employment laws the government, through the SSC, is telling employers, workers and their unions in the public sector, that even where they don't want or need those laws, they have to have them."

"It's a bizarre direction that suggests the government is more concerned with ideology than practical solutions for happy workplaces," says Ms Riggs.

ENDS

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