Employees enter a new era of rights

Collective bargaining will be the centrepiece of the new IR system. If the majority of workers want to bargain for a union collective agreement, the employer must co-operate - and it must be conducted in good faith, meaning employers must be fair dinkum about trying to get a result.

Research consistently shows that collective bargaining gets the best outcomes for workers - up to 6 to 18 per cent better than individual contracts.

And groups of workers in low-paid sectors that have previously found it difficult to bargain collectively - such as cleaners, hospital workers and community workers - will be able to get help to do so. Fair Work Australia, a new independent umpire with real teeth, will be able to assist with bargaining, conciliate and mediate disputes and issue binding decisions for the low paid when bargaining fails.

The courts will be given a new role in overseeing the application of awards and the National Employment Standards, providing a strong deterrent against the infringement of workers' rights and entitlements.

Minimum wage workers can look forward to a much fairer system of setting their pay under the new laws.

Australian Workplace Agreements, used to break down collective strength in the workplace and to drive down wages and conditions, are now outlawed.

On average, workers employed on AWAs and other individual contracts earn almost 6 per cent less than those under union-negotiated agreements. In future, common law contracts will have to be above the industry award.

Finally, no longer will the basic right to belong to a union be eroded by threats of dismissal, pressure, discrimination or victimisation.

Union delegates will be protected during bargaining and it will be unlawful to take action or discriminate against someone simply because they are a union member. There will be a guaranteed right to union representation when it is needed to settle a dispute or negotiate on a worker's behalf.

The new fairer workplace laws are a great step forward but the task of strengthening the lives of working Australians is an ongoing process. We have more work to do to ensure that the laws covering construction workers are recognised as unfair and have no place in Australia's industrial relations system and that we have the strongest possible occupational health and safety laws to guarantee safety at work.

But this week, we celebrate the fact that with the Fair Work Act, Australians again have proper rights at work.