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Advocate Ads to be Referred to Auditor-General, ACCC

The Employment Advocate is facing legal action on two fronts after commencing a tax-payer funded advertising blitz to promote Peter Reith's secret non-union individual contracts.

Labor Council secretary Michael Costa says the Employment Advocate's decision to run half-page advertisements in the national press as "a clear and extravagant misuse of taxpayers' money" and would be referred to the Commonwealth Auditor-General.

And the Federal Opposition says parts of the ads are misleading and should be referred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to determine whether there has been a breach of the Trade Practices Act.

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Arch Bevis says the claim that '...no employee is in any way worse off with an AWA...' was clearly misleading.

"The Employment Advocate's advertisements imply that AWAs may only 'top up' Award conditions - that is not the reality of these types of agreements", Bevis says.

Employment Advocate chief Jonathan Hamburger was grilled over the ads in Senate Estimates committee this week, admitting the wording of the advertisements had been considered in-house.

The advertisements are an attempt to drum up business for the government's floundering individual contracts, the Australian Workplace Agreements. Despite vigorous promotion by the federal government, just over 50,000 workers, have agreed to sign their way out of the award system.

The Employment Advocate was set up after the 1996 election, as part of John Howard's promise that "no Australian worker would be worse off" under the Coalition.

But in two years of business, not a single a prosecution has been launched on behalf of a worker. To date, all prosecutions have been against trade unions.

Costa called on the Employment Advocate to refocus its activities, given that a recent Labor Council-Newspoll had found 48 per cent of workers would be in a union if they were "free to choose".

"This means that 20 per cent of the workforce are being prevented to join unions because of management hostility or other factors," Mr Costa says,.

"This represents a clear problem, that an apolitical Employment Advocate could deal with.

"Instead, the Advocate appears content to do the Howard Government's bidding and attempt to portray the trade union movement as the enemy. This is a view that 70 per cent of Australians disagree with." (Source Labor Council-Newspoll)

"It is outrageous that the Howard Government is allowing taxpayers' money to run a blatantly ideological agenda."

  View entire issue - print all of the articles!

  Issue 12 contents

»	Push for Decent Call Centres
»	Shaw Unveils Second Wave
»	Union Raises the Roof for Beryl
»	Cotter Withdraws Currawong Standover Claims
»	Reith Second Wave Will Prolong Industrial Disputes
»	It�s Rio Telstra -- Union Braces for Attack
»	Fears of AWA Push in State Rail
»	Age Tele-Centre Seeks Pay Equity
»	Advocate Ads to be Referred to Auditor-General, ACCC
»	Labor Council to Stage Pre-Drug Summit

»	Guest Report
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Piers Watch

»	Wran Wrong on Wrepublic
»	Digging the Dirt-Digging

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