POPULAR WORDS

The federal government has signalled its intention to again present in the Senate amending legislation that aims to exclude new staff employed by small businesses from unfair dismissal laws. This follows the legislation's defeat last night in the Senate - the third time the Democrats and the Labor Party have combined to knock back the proposal over the past few years. The Democrats have vowed to reject the legislation again when it is brought back to the Senate in three months. But the Workplace Relations Minister, Peter Reith, says the Coalition will not surrender in its attempt to deliver on its election promises. "The fact of the matter is it's no political stunt. It's an election commitment that the Government made, particularly to the small business community and we don't walk away from the commitments we have made, particularly when up to 50,000 jobs could be created as a result," he was reported as saying. Meanwhile, this week a number of the Coalition's key industrial relations reforms proposals will be debated in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Today the Senate will again debate the Coalition's proposed legislation to prevent industrial action being taken in support of industry wide pattern bargaining. Reith claims this Bill is essential to protect the system of enterprise bargaining, and to ensure that the legal right to strike is only used for the purposes intended when introduced in 1993. "Already unions in the manufacturing sector in Victoria are threatening, and taking, industrial action in support of pattern demands," he says. On Thursday, the House of Representatives will debate the Coalition's proposals to give employees a right to a secret ballot in their workplace before industrial action is taken. "This is a basic democratic principle. If the Labor Party's rhetoric about employee rights is to mean anything, then they should be voting to put employee rights above union rights," Reith says. Fourthly, the Labor Party and the Democrats face a test on youth wages and youth employment. Both have threatened to disallow Coalition