Today Abigail spoke in support of a bill to rectify restrictions for construction and contract cleaning workers accessing portable long service leave, calling on the Federal Labor Government to go further in fixing the core issues that will continue denying these workers their entitlements.
Abigail said:
I indicate that The Greens support the Portable Long Service Leave Legislation Amendment Bill 2024. The bill seeks to partially rectify the deeply perverse situation that construction and contract cleaning workers who have been doing work at Commonwealth places find themselves faced with: Due to an arcane constitutional restriction, they are not entitled to full access to the portable long service leave scheme as it is currently constructed. In New South Wales the Building and Construction Industry Long Service Payments Act 1986 [BCI Act] and the Contract Cleaning Industry (Portable Long Service Leave Scheme) Act [CCI Act] both established long service leave schemes for construction and contract cleaners.
Under those schemes, eligible workers would accrue credits for years of service, which can be converted and cashed as long service leave from a shared pool of funds that their entitlements are paid into, meaning that their leave is then transferable between workplaces. This is an extremely important entitlement for these industries that are rife with precarious work and short‑term contracts, conditions that are outside the control of the workers and would otherwise preclude them from accruing long service leave entitlements. These schemes were wise and fair policymaking that responded to the needs of the industry. Modern labour trends have seen an increasing prevalence of precarious work, and of job hopping.
We now run the risk of a new generation of workers missing out on important long service entitlements. I echo the sentiments of my colleague in the other place, Jenny Leong, the member for Newtown, in calling for the expansion of long service leave entitlements to even more industries. However, I admit that the current situation we are tasked with patching up today does not sell the merits of the scheme well. Due to a constitutional technicality and through no fault of the workers there are hundreds of worksites and potentially thousands of workers who will fall foul of the absurd fact that work done on land owned by the Commonwealth is not counted as work eligible for the scheme.
As if this were not bad enough, under the BCI Act and the CCI Act the Long Service Leave Corporation must cancel a worker's registration under the relevant scheme for a non-service period or a break from eligible work of four or more years. Cancellation of a worker's registration invalidates all credits earned for prior work. We are left with the situation where workers doing work on a Commonwealth site for a period of years will find themselves kicked off the scheme. It is a situation of profound injustice. Commonwealth places include airports, military bases and any other sites that the Commonwealth has acquired for a public purpose and over which it has proprietary rights. By the Government's own estimation there are as many as 150 such worksites in New South Wales.
In a practical sense this means that workers might spend five, six or seven years working and earning credits to put towards long service leave, and then have those credits wiped out if they go on to work at a Commonwealth place for four or more years. If those workers start their careers at a Commonwealth workplace, they cannot even register in the appropriate portable leave scheme until they work on a non-Commonwealth worksite. Thousands of workers at Commonwealth places in New South Wales are edging ever close to this four‑year threshold when their registration will be cancelled and their credits for prior service wiped clean. Thousands of people have been working hard to construct things such as the Western Sydney International Airport, on which work commenced in 2018. Many of them would be accruing long service leave now if they had been employed in workplaces that were not Commonwealth places, but they are currently being denied that right.
The bill we debate this afternoon will not fix this core issue. All we are doing is preventing workers from being kicked off the scheme. These workers will continue to be denied the right to accrue long service leave credits for legitimate work done on a worksite that just so happens to be owned by the Commonwealth. Even more absurd is that this time it is not the bosses who are to blame, at least not directly. I am informed employers are happy to pay the credits, but this constitutional issue makes it illegal for them to do so. That is a farcical situation, but it is the Federal Labor Government's intransigence that is denying these workers their entitlements. It would be a lot easier if it were fixed at a Federal level.
The bill seeks to amend the BCI Act and the CCI Act and their respective regulations to address the first of these three issues. Schedules 1 and 2 amend the regulations of both Acts to ensure that days at work at a Commonwealth place are not considered non-service days and are therefore not counted towards the four‑year threshold for cancellation. Schedule 1.1[2] inserts new section 19A into the BCI Act, which provides for the reinstatement of registration and associated credits for workers who have had these cancelled due to work on a Commonwealth site. Schedule 2.1[2] inserts a parallel section 3 into the CCI Act, which would have the same effect for workers covered under that scheme. These are sensible amendments and The Greens absolutely support them. But this stopgap is just that: a stopgap. I urge the Federal Labor Government to pull its finger out and fix this unjustifiable situation that sees workers cheated out of what they deserve, what they fought for and won, and what they should remain entitled to.
Read the debate in Hansard here.
14 November 2024