Labor starts drafting wage laws as care industries warn of strikes

The nation’s aged care peak body has warned pay deals across employers could lead to sector-crippling strikes as Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott said multi-employer bargaining would not guarantee better conditions for low-paid women.

Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said multi-employer bargaining wasn’t a solution for female-dominated, low-paid sectors.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Legislation is expected to be drafted imminently as Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government to act on dozens of outcomes from the summit this year, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not say what boundaries would be applied to multi-employer bargaining.

“We’ll work through that, but I think there has been a great deal of commonality. There’s not unanimity, there’s a difference between the two things,” Albanese said. “But there is a common interest that says this, enterprise bargaining isn’t working at the moment”.

Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus insisted the summit made clear the urgent need for multi-employer bargaining as the government committed to an overhaul of pay negotiations to give workers more power to forge agreements across several businesses at once.

McManus said that without change, real wages would continue to go backwards. “The summit has made clear the urgent need for action to make bargaining simpler, fairer, and more accessible, including with new multi-employer bargaining options,” she said.

But Westacott said the BCA didn’t believe multi-employer bargaining “is a solution to the problems of low wages, particularly in the [publicly] funded sector, and sectors dominated by women”.

“We believe that we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t solve one problem and create 50 others,” she said, agreeing with other business groups that they didn’t want to allow the possibility of wide-scale industrial action by allowing broad, uniform agreements across enterprises.

Unions want to see multiple-employer agreements in the care industries, which are low-paid, and dominated by women. But BCA president Tim Reed said women would get higher wages through innovation and productivity increases within businesses, “not across industries”.

“The industrial relations system therefore needs to remain focused at the enterprise level,” he said.

Paul Sadler, chief executive of Aged and Community Care Providers Association, the peak body for aged-care providers, said while his organisation was open to discussions on the topic, striking workplace deals across multiple employers could expose providers to industrial action.

“In the aged care sector we are looking after vulnerable people, and we are concerned widespread industrial action would be detrimental to the care of older people,” Sadler said.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, whose airline has faced industrial action threats on multiple fronts this year, said the “devil’s in the details” over whether multi-employer agreements would lead to greater strikes but said the discussion was largely focused on the care industries.

“We just want to make sure there’s no unintended consequences, and it’s focused on what it’s trying to resolve, that’s the thing we’re keen on,” Joyce said, largely echoing Wesfarmers chief Rob Scott, who said he wanted to see more detail about what was being proposed.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the “devil’s in the detail” on multi-employer bargaining.Credit: James Brickwood.

“I don’t believe that necessarily solves all the problems that are trying to be solved,” he said.

Woolworths head Brad Banducci questioned how multi-employer bargaining would work with a large employer such as his, saying the shopping chain had 130,000 employees in very different roles.

In a discussion about the proposal on Sky News, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said striking was an effective part of bargaining.

“It is a part and parcel of the bargaining process,” he said, in a comment that prompted opposition industrial relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash to accuse Jones of endorsing strike action.

“The Australian people do not want more strikes. After two years of COVID restrictions, they want to get back to work and get on with their lives.” Cash said.

University of Sydney industrial relations expert Shae McCrystal, who was at the summit, said multi-employer bargaining didn’t have to apply across an entire workforce, but the debate about industrial action was important.

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