There’s been a lot of commotion over the Federal Government’s planned changes to industrial relations. On one side, you have unions clamouring about the working rights of average Australians going to the dogs, predicting that the sky will fall and send us all to the salt mines
by Craig Donaldson
There’s been a lot of commotion over the Federal Government’s planned changes to industrial relations. On one side, you have unions clamouring about the working rights of average Australians going to the dogs, predicting that the sky will fall and send us all to the salt mines. On the other side, you have the Government proclaiming from on high that its changes will bring about better wages, higher productivity and more secure jobs for every Australian (despite much objective research to the contrary).
Fact is, despite the proposed changes to industrial relations and all the hullabaloo over their impact, probably not a lot is going to change for Australian workers. I was chatting with a well respected employment lawyer a week ago about the proposed reforms, and he said the law of supply and demand would inevitably dictate the labour market in Australia. This has become more acute over recent times, with skill shortages in certain sectors. For example, an employer group in Queensland recently petitioned the state’s Industrial Relations Commission for a 30 per cent raise for surveyors simply because there aren’t enough to go around. This came on the heels of a massive 31 per cent pay rise for electricity workers across the State – for the same reasons. Last time I looked, it was usually the union’s job to argue for pay increases, but less supply and more demand is going to significantly change the face of the workplace over the coming decade – industrial relations reforms or not.
More savvy employers and their HR departments recognise this. Workforce planning is coming to the fore in many organisations as they prepare their organisations to handle increasingly acute skill shortages. Some HR departments are more on top of this than others, and those that aren’t are going to cause themselves and their companies a lot of headaches in the future (see our article on human capital in Australia on page 14).
It’s likely there will be a lot more noise over industrial relations changes in the coming months, and so it’s good for HR to be up with the latest developments on this front. But more importantly, HR needs to take a longer term, more strategic view of their role and exactly how they can contribute to ensuring their organisations can survive less supply and more demand for the right people.
