The Albanese Government’s multi-employer bargaining laws must be wound back before they risk substantial damage to the economy, says the Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association.
“These laws should not be outrageously expanded at the wishes of the ACTU,” said AREEA Chief Executive Steve Knott AM.
“The ACTU’s demands go in exactly the wrong direction for the stronger investment and productivity needed to create and support more jobs.
“The Government took the wrong approach with the SJBP Act by creating more barriers, risks and complexities associated with collective bargaining.
“The alternative approach – removing barriers and reducing risk and complexity – would see enterprise agreement making viewed in far more favourable terms.”
AREEA’s submission to the review of the “Secure Jobs, Better Pay” legislation argues the Government had no justification allowing non-consent-based multi-employer bargaining targeting highly-paid arrangements within the private sector.
It comes as the ACTU calls for significant expansion of the multi-employer bargaining laws including removing the need for employees to agree to unions roping in their workplaces for campaigns.
“Multi-employer bargaining should only be facilitated in Australia where employers agree to bargain collectively,” the submission says.
“The Single Interest Authorisation stream that compels businesses to bargain together under the dubious cloak of operational comparability risks disastrous economic outcomes and should be repealed.
“AREEA is concerned multi-employer/industry bargaining campaigns targeted at major resources and energy project operators and/or within critical supply chains could cause nationally significant projects to grind to a halt via coordinated strike action.
“Multi-employer bargaining has no place in the resources industry where a wide range of employment arrangements are in place – including EBAs and ‘all staff’ direct employment – that accommodate the variety of interests of employers and employees working in highly-productive and high-paying workplaces.”
AREEA’s submission also points to an unintended consequence of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act – with employers not already in the enterprise bargaining system avoiding it at all costs.
“The irony of the SJBP Act is that measures purported to promote enterprise agreements as the preferred industrial instrument in Australian workplaces are having the opposite effect for businesses not yet engaged in bargaining,” AREEA says.
“Whether an employer is an emerging single site mining operator developing a greenfields project, or a large multi-site business which has successfully run its operations on common law staff arrangements (i.e. agreement free) for years, the same question arises on IR strategy: why would our business proactively choose to pursue an enterprise agreement?”
Read AREEA’s submission to the SJBP Review here.
