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Productivity Commission's workplace relations report made public a day before embargo lifted

By James Bennett and Melissa Clarke
Updated 6 minutes agoThu 22 Jan 2015, 3:17pm
Map: Australia
A Productivity Commission report into workplace relations appears to have been accidentally made public online.
The issues paper, entitled Workplace Relations Framework, was marked "under embargo until 12:15am, Friday 23 January".
The document discusses penalty rates, bargaining and labour flexibility and is expected to be a starting point for the Coalition's workplace relations policy.

The Productivity Commission said a link to the embargoed document was sent to journalists and was not intended to be made public until tomorrow. The report can now only be accessed with a password.
The Opposition's workplace relations spokesman Brendan O'Connor tweeted a link to the document this afternoon and posed the question: "Is this the starting point for Tony Abbott's revival of WorkChoices?"
The issues paper invites discussion about the rationale for minimum wage, how effective it is, how many people should receive it, how long people should receive it for and how it is calculated.
On awards and penalty rates, it raises questions of whether they should be further simplified, calculated differently, swapped for time-off-in-lieu or scrapped altogether.
The section on bargaining raises questions about the process employers must undertake before they can ask employees to approve a workplace agreement, suggesting it is an "open question" as to whether some should be changed.
It also queries whether there should be changes to what enterprise agreements can cover, in particular the role of unions.
The Government has promised to take any recommendations it wants to adopt from the inquiry to the next election.
The final report is due in November.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-...n-workplace-relations-report-released/6035272