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Peter Richards

August 2024

Personalized confrontation and belligerency, thrives in a bubble of Jacobin-like hostility to the outside world.

How to remake the CFMEU culture of confrontation

Only deeper, durable changes will stop the law-breaking construction union’s self-reinforcing behaviour re-emerging after three years of administration.

July 2024

Penalties have to be harsher than just a cost of doing business.

How to burst the CFMEU’s balloon for good

Press the construction union, and it simply bulges up somewhere else. More tools are needed if the union’s long-term culture is to change.

May 2020

The productivity goal has been lost in enterprise bargaining. Employers see only risk.

Eight principles to revive enterprise bargaining deals

A principles-based approach means that everybody owns workplace safety. Could we do the same for productivity as well?

April 2020

The Hawke-Keating governments envisaged enterprise bargaining as a means to releasing productivity squirrelled up in awards and the poor work practices they embodied

Broken enterprise bargaining system needs a reboot

Temporarily suspending prescriptive industrial awards has saved jobs. But the post-pandemic recovery will be stifled unless the complex BOOT test is simplified.

December 2019

One Nation was sensitive to union protests in Queensland.

Not too late to slam door on bad union behaviour

There is still plenty of existing law to tackle the most common sources of workplace complaint such as right of entry breaches.

November 2019

Companies now have to make abstract comparisons of salaries with long-gone award conditions.

'Wage theft' is a costly punishment for innocent business

Wrong payments need to be fixed by simplification, not cumbersome 19th-century levels of prescription.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/by/peter-richards-p4yvmr