Employer groups recently lined up to criticise the Australian Labor Party’s industrial relations platform, claiming it would adversely affect the interests of private employers and compromise economic development
Employer groups recently lined up to criticise the Australian Labor Party’s industrial relations platform, claiming it would adversely affect the interests of private employers and compromise economic development.
The additional costs it would impose on business through further regulation and heightened trade union activity would have significant implications for jobs and employment, according to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI).
The chamber’s chief executive Peter Hendy said the main areas of concern included increased regulation of workplace bargaining, acceptance of industry wide agreements (pattern bargaining), abolition of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) and individual bargaining rights, and expanded AIRC powers and award regulation.
“Industry agrees that skills development, training, workplace safety and work and family are important contemporary issues, although even in these areas not all proposals in the platform are supported by employers,” Hendy said.
Other areas of concern in the ALP’s industrial relations policy included expanded union right of entry and employer obligations to assist union activities, rights for casual employees to convert to part-time employment, regulation of contractors and paid maternity leave implications for employers.
The Australian Mines and Metals Association (AMMA) echoed the ACCI’s comments, claiming that a change of government would present a real possibility of Australia’s industrial relations policy-making process taking “a disastrous U turn”.
“This is a major concern to the resources sector in Australia, that has embraced direct employment arrangements with its workforce to the benefit of all concerned,” said AMMA CEO Steve Knott.
“Eight seats stand between a continuation of the existing federal workplace relations system and the Latham Labor industrial relations solution.”
Knott said that in recent years the metals and mining industry has delivered major improvements in safety, employee earnings, employee skill development, productivity and profitability with almost zero lost time due to industrial action.
“The majority of the resource sector has the terms and conditions of its workforce set by direct non-union industrial regulation. This also reflects the overwhelming majority of Australia’s workforce does not belong to a trade union,” he said.
He added that the nature of employment, the industrial relations system, the size and structure of the trade union movement, and the processes of wage negotiations and work organisation in Australian workplaces have changed profoundly over the past decade.
“A re-regulation to late 80’s early 90’s industrial relations legislation, as proposed by the ALP, is likely to be interpreted by international capital markets as a signal that the positive trend in labour and product market reform is to be halted or reversed,” he said.
The ACCI also called on the ALP to match the policy vision adopted by Prime Minister Paul Keating for a less centralised workplace relations system. However, it conceded that the industrial relations platform is more regulatory than when Labor was last in government, and would compromise its economic objectives.
