The decline of the enterprise bargaining system under Labor's Fair Work Act threatens to undermine workers' wages unless it is fixed, with recent data showing employees on collective agreements have won pay rises 40 per cent higher than in the rest of the economy.
From 2016 to 2019 wage growth in new agreements has averaged 2.7 per cent a year compared to the economy-wide wage growth of 1.9 per cent, according to the government's latest report on bargaining trends.
