VIC: Hubbard distances himself from Kelty ideology comments

AAP General News (Australia)
08-12-1999
VIC: Hubbard distances himself from Kelty ideology comments

MELBOURNE, Aug 12 AAP - Victorian union leader Leigh Hubbard today played down comments he
made about ACTU secretary Bill Kelty failing to deliver on his ideological rhetoric.

Mr Hubbard, Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary, yesterday said policies such as the
enterprise bargaining system created by Mr Kelty failed to live up to their promises.

But today Mr Hubbard said the media "had made mischief out of what was said".

"I quoted Bill Kelty without any malice or anything at all in terms of the great
expectations we had 10 years ago for enterprise bargaining," Mr Hubbard told ABC Radio.

"My comments were in the context of the casualisation of the (workforce)... now 30 per cent
of the workforce is casual or temporary, and simply making the point that enterprise
bargaining, despite some of its good points, has not been able to manage that.

"We haven't been able to win the battle with the employers over the control of workplace
change."

Mr Hubbard told the Melbourne Rotary Club yesterday that part of the fault for the
decrease in fulltime jobs and increase in casual jobs lay with the union movement and Mr
Kelty.

"It's been a very tough period for the trade unions ... part of it's also been
ideology-driven.

"Enterprise bargaining was promised to us.

"Bill Kelty said that the new bargaining strategy was a strategy designed to create more
interesting and financially rewarding jobs by stimulating greater worker involvement in all
aspects of the way their industry and workplace operates, thereby driving enterprise reform
and pushing up productivity levels for high growth," he said yesterday.

"Workers would be more involved, satisfied, everyone would be better off, business and
employees.

"But what we have got 10 years after the Accord is that reality didn't meet the rhetoric."

Meanwhile, workers are expected to turn out in their tens of thousands today to march in
central Melbourne against the federal government's second wave of industrial reforms.

AAP st/er/kr/br

KEYWORD: KELTY HUBBARD DAYLEAD

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