Brad Norington | September 18, 2008 ONE of Julia Gillard's central purposes in ditching Work Choices - apart from promising to restore a "fair go" in the workplace - was to create a set of employment laws that were relatively simple.
That now looks a lost cause - if it were ever possible.
It is no easy task that Labor has set itself in junking John Howard's workplace laws and starting again from the ground.
Of course, Gillard is not starting entirely anew.
She will not readily admit it, but a fair slab of Work Choices will remain: things such as restrictions on the content of union bargaining claims (what happened to freedom of agreement-making?), no industry-wide strikes and no arbitration of union wage claims except in exceptional circumstances.
The complexity shows in the detail that Gillard will graft onto the basic Work Choices enterprise bargaining model to make good Labor's promise to restore the balance in the workplace away from an employer bias.
In this area, Gillard could tie Labor in knots, creating a field day for the legal profession as big bits of the new regime are tested in the courts.
Gillard's proposed Fair Dismissal Code for small business sounds sensible. A one-warning system for employees in small firms before they can be dismissed brings them into line with the legal principle operating in larger ones.
Labor has bent over backwards to accommodate small business by saying lawyers should not be involved. Keeping lawyers out of unfair dismissal claims will be difficult.
They will be permitted when complex questions arise and, as legal academic Andrew Stewart points out, such questions always arise.
Is a person an employee or contractor? Did they resign or were they dismissed?
Hello, lawyers.
Multi-employer bargaining is another avenue for lawyers.
Gillard wants to allow industry-style negotiations for the low-paid, but has not defined low-paid yet and proposes to deny these people a right to strike.
A legal haze hangs over arbitration of wage claims too.
It's allowed only if there is demonstrated harm to safety, the economy and the workplace.
Surely it would be possible for unions and their lawyers to manipulate such conditions.
Sensibly, Gillard has recognised that the inspectorate and judicial arms of her proposed workplace umpire should not exist under the same roof, as she previously suggested.
Lawyers, meanwhile, can look forward to a bright future.
