Who’s on an AWA, where and what does it mean for the poll?

Just who’s on an AWA — and where? The official figures from the Office of the Employment Advocate are listed below. But how does this translate in electoral terms?

“Almost 90,000 voters in marginal seats are on newly signed Australian Workplace Agreements, underlining Kevin Rudd’s high-stakes gamble in vowing to axe the contracts,” the Herald Sun reports today. The story says 43,000 workers are on AWAs in 17 seats with margins of less than 2% and more than 88,000 voters are employed on the contracts in seats with margins under 5%.

The Hun says: “Of those, Labor potentially has the most to lose from tearing up the contracts, with 56,000 workers on the contracts living in ALP-held seats.” 

Crikey went looking for more details. We contacted the ACTU, who said they don’t have that information. We also spoke to the Office of the Employment Advocate, who referred us to their website and said they could get back to us with electorate details, but later.

We’ve crunched the Office of the Employment Advocate numbers of the Top 10 employee coverage by state and industry (WorkChoices commencement to March 2007) for people on AWA.

They give a national total of 252, 955 people — 11,043 in the ACT, 50,322 in NSW, 3503 in the Northern Territory, 43,901 in Queensland, 20,849 in South Australia, 6912 in Tasmania, 50,104 in Victoria and 66,320 in WA.

That WA figure is interesting. So WA has the highest number of people on AWAs. WA is Labor’s worst state at the moment. The party could go backwards there.

252,999 voters nationwide is more than enough to swing a poll – but they need to be in marginal seats. Fly-in, fly-out means that all these high-paying mine workers we keep hearing about aren’t all locked up in a handful of seats. They’re all over the place. And there’s plenty of action out there on the ground targeting all sorts of people.

The Your Rights at Work campaign has 21 people employed full-time to target 21 marginal electorates around the country in the lead-up to the election.

As Crikey has reported, Evan Langdon from the ACTU’s marginal seat campaign says Your Rights at Work have placed one person in six seats in Queensland, two in Tasmania, five in NSW, two in Victoria, two in WA, three in SA and one in the Northern Territory. “The campaign coordinators are doing grass roots — letterboxing, door knocking, street stalls etc — campaigning throughout the electorates, based around informing working families of their rights at work and challenging the local Coalition MPs’ support of John Howard’s unfair laws,” he said.

There could also be a receptive audience. Last month, The Age reported “analysis of employment statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows a dramatic increase in the number of blue-collar jobs in Australia … by 300,000 in the five years to February 200”. 

Around the same time Last month, the Sydney Morning Herald claimed Australia’s working-poor total was almost a million, “living in households in which at least one adult has a job but earns only the federal minimum wage, research shows”.

Unless all these people live in safe Labor seats, industrial relations remains a major issue for the Howard Government.

Employee coverage by industry:

Australian workplace agreements: Top 10 employee coverage by state and industry (WorkChoices commencement to March 2007)*

*Note: Number of employees covered under Australian workplace agreements since the commencement of WorkChoices. The totals do not include Australian workplace agreements that did not specify a State/Territory.

Employee collective agreements: Top 10 employee coverage by state and industry (WorkChoices commencement to March 2007)*

*Note: Number of employees covered under employee collective agreements since the commencement of WorkChoices. These include multi-state agreements which operate over more than one state. The totals do not include employee collective agreements that did not specify a state/territory.

Union collective agreements: Top 10 employee coverage by state and industry (WorkChoices commencement to March 2007)*

*Note: Number of employees covered under union collective agreements since the commencement of WorkChoices. These include multi-state agreements which operate over more than one state. The totals do not include union collective agreements that did not specify a state/territory.

Last updated: 12 April 2007