The IR bill has become law after the amendments got passed in parliament, with the national employer association Ai Group saying the provisions of the bill dealing with the operation of the single-interest bargaining stream remain far from clear.
Ai Group CEO Innes Willox said several employers are very nervous about what the new bargaining regime will mean for them and added that for many, there won’t be clear answers.
“The devil really is in the detail when it comes to assessing the merits of the amendments regarding who will be covered by the single-interest bargaining stream. While the new ‘reasonably comparable’ test is of some limited benefit, it also raises a raft of new questions and concerns,” he said.
“While the amendments will permit employers to argue against being roped into union proposed multi-employer bargaining, the process proposed will be very difficult and costly for employers to use.
“It will inevitably result in employers having to engage lawyers to help them ‘prove’ that they are not ‘reasonably comparable’ to all the other employers covered by the agreements. This is potentially a very high bar for an employer to get past.”
Willox claimed the Bill unfairly puts this very significant onus on an employer with 50 staff, rather than expecting a union to demonstrate why they contend a particular employer should be covered by a relevant agreement.
“The Bill will leave employers in the impossible position of grappling with whether they should spend time and money running litigation in the Commission arguing why they shouldn’t be covered or whether they should simply give in,” he said.
“On any reasonable assessment, the real winners from the introduction of the new laws will be the lawyers. The amendments have obviously been hurriedly prepared and with very little consideration given to how they will operate in practice, or the impact on employers.”
Willox also called it a “dud piece of legislation delivering zero productivity growth” that imposes “regressive changes to Australia’s workplace relations arrangements” as it offers no guarantee of wages growth.
“It puts at serious risk the recent strong gains in employment and the inroads that have been made into unemployment and underemployment,” he said.
“Previous Labor and Coalition governments spent weeks in responsive consultations with experts from unions and employer groups before introducing IR law changes through the Committee on Industrial Legislation (COIL) processes. For example, there were two weeks of formal consultations before the Fair Work Act was introduced in 2009 – consultations which the then Minister, Julia Gillard, said considerably improved how the Bill would operate.
“This Government allowed only one day of COIL meetings weeks ago before introducing a raft of new amendments on a Bill implementing the biggest changes in workplace relations arrangements for many years.
“The Government has signalled that there will be a further tranche of IR changes next year. We would urge the Government not to rush through that legislation and to take the time for detailed consultation through COIL and other means.
“Next year, the Government must shift its focus to initiatives that will make a real difference to productivity and sustainable real wages growth. It could start with looking at the Productivity Commission’s last five-yearly review of Australia’s productivity performance and acting on its recommendations and then taking seriously the current Productivity Commission review when it is released next year.”
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