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Unions and employers racing to strike job-saving deals
Former union boss and Labor minister Simon Crean has urged workers, businesses and the government to come together in a grand bargain to offer training, wage subsidies and new jobs in thriving industries to the unemployed during the coronavirus crisis.
Mr Crean, who as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions helped negotiate the accord between unions and industry that underpins Australia's modern workplace system, said the challenge of COVID-19 was bigger than another accord.
Simon Crean, who served as a minister under four prime ministers and helped negotiate the Accord, has praised collaboration to help workers cope with coronavirus.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
"We're in a crisis that we've never known before and this is the time in which people need to pull together," Mr Crean said. "Let's make something of this crisis."
There were already negotiations under way on Wednesday for big revisions to the awards that determine pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers in administrative roles and in the restaurant and catering sector as part of a bid to save jobs.
In a similar deal struck on Tuesday in the hotel and bar industry, unions agreed to accept reduced hours for full and part-time staff until the end of the year so workers could keep an income, albeit reduced, in the face of the Morrison government's industry-wide lockdown.
Wes Lambert, chief executive of the Restaurant and Catering Association, said the discussions were "collaborative" and he expected an agreement to be reached by Thursday. Sources on the union side said the same.
Jack Chen, the manager of Good Luck Hotpot, sits in his empty restaurant. The restaurant industry has been forced to shut down or go takeaway only as a result of coronavirus restrictions. Credit: Louise Kennerley
Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter has heralded the deals being struck between union and employer groups that have, in some cases, historically loathed one another.
"We are obviously in the territory of doing things that we've never done before, cooperating with people we've never really cooperated with before, compromising to save jobs," Mr Porter said.
The ACTU, which is helping coordinate the negotiations, has forecast up to 2 million job losses in coming weeks if the government does not take further urgent action to support workers.
Its president Michele O'Neil said the simplest way to prevent further job losses would be for the government to pay an 80 per cent wage subsidy to employers who kept their staff on the books.
But Ms O'Neil also backed the negotiations between unions and employers, saying unions and businesses were reaching agreements on "sensible measures" to keep people employed, maintain conditions and move workers into roles with higher demand, like healthcare and food retail sectors.
Innes Willox, chief executive of employer body Ai Group, which is part of the award renegotiations, said his organisation was "seeking quick agreement where possible" with unions.
One factor bringing employers to the table is government coronavirus payments, which include subsidies for apprentice wages and payroll tax help, that only apply if a business is continuing to employ staff.
"These subsidies don't help you if your business isn't in business," Mr Lambert said.
Mr Crean made the case for those subsidies to be extended to help all workers who had been stood down so they could use their time productively and train themselves in conjunction with educational institutions, pointing to a similar scheme he had implemented as employment minister in the early 1990s.
"The time is now to rethink those models in a different context," Mr Crean said.