“The willingness of the Federal Government to begin a process of amending its IR Bill is welcome, however with unjustifiably expanded multi-employer bargaining and associated strike rights at its heart the Bill remains fatally flawed,” Innes Willox, Chief Executive of the national employer association Ai Group said today.
“The breadth and significance of the changes in this Bill reinforce the need for the Government to slow down the passage of the Bill to enable both Parliament and the community to meaningfully assess its impact.
“The tweaks to the Bill are in response to consultations where Ai Group identified blatantly flawed and unfair aspects of the proposed legislation. We thank the Government for its willingness to try to address these employer concerns. But, big deficiencies in the Bill remain and as it stands with multi-party bargaining potentially available across broad areas of the economy it continues to be unacceptable to industry.
“Many of the amendments announced today are highly technical and need to be carefully scrutinised.
“There has been an important change that ensures that the Fair Work Commission can only amend agreements to the extent necessary to ensure that they pass the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT). That is a sensible change to address a concern that Ai Group has raised, but further amendments are still necessary to ensure that the Commission has to obtain an employer’s consent to any change to the agreement that it proposes. It shouldn’t be controversial to amend the Bill to require that the Commission can’t simply rewrite an agreement without the employer actually agreeing to the change.
“While some amendments do make modest improvements to the Bill, others introduce new problems.
“A proposed amendment that would empower unions to prevent employers from putting a proposed multi-employer agreement to a vote of their workforces without union consent will hand unions an unreasonable level of control over the content of agreements.
“Changes to give employers with expired enterprise agreements a narrow window to negotiate a new instrument are welcome but fall well short of what is practically required to ensure that employers and employees can bargain at the workplace level. Further amendments are needed to ensure employers and employees who want to reach an agreement that suits the circumstances of their workplace can continue to do so without being drawn into a multi-employer agreement and without this being dependent on union agreement.
“A major concern for industry is that the criteria for when a union can seek a multi-employer agreement remains unreasonably loose. It would lead to an unjustified expansion of multi-employer bargaining and industrial action rather than encouraging parties to make agreements at the individual workplace level. Indeed, the amendments water down the scant safeguards originally contained in the Bill regarding when multi-employer bargaining will be available. It is disappointing that we haven’t yet seen movement on this front.
“Throughout the hurried development of this legislation, Government has indicated there is a willingness to work constructively on amendments to the Bill, but the real test for the Government is whether it is prepared to commit to slow down the passage of the Bill to enable this to occur effectively. The more we consult and the more employers consider the proposed legislation the more that problems are identified.
“This Bill does much more than just regulate the setting of wages. The changes relating to bargaining make profound alterations to the architecture of the workplace relations system that will impact businesses small and large, as well as the broader community. Many of these proposed measures extend well beyond any pre-election commitment of the Government or level of consensus reached with industry.
“While the establishment of the National Construction Industry Forum will hopefully provide a forum for cultural change in the construction sector, it is not a like for like replacement of the ABCC and the vital role it has played in maintaining order in the sector. It is vital that the Minister appoints strong voices for industry to the Forum,” Mr Willox said.
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