Child care centres join multi-employer bargaining

Almost 500 child care centres have joined a landmark multi-employer bargaining application.

Secretary of the ACTU Sally Mcmanus. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Childcare providers representing almost 500 centres have joined a landmark multi-employer bargaining application, despite ­industry groups claiming the new laws are causing anxiety across the sector.

After unions announced they had a commitment from about 50 centres to join the application, G8 Education, which operates more than 430 centres, said on Tuesday that it too had signed up to the bargaining process.

G8 Education chief executive Pejman Okhovat said it wanted to work with the sector to deliver an outcome that recognised the value and significant work of those on the frontline.

“We want to attract and retain excellent team members to support delivery of the best outcomes for the children in our care,” he said. “We look forward to advocating, along with others, for government funding to support higher wages and for greater recognition of the important role our sector plays in social and economic outcomes.”

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the application between unions and a “discrete group of employers” should ring alarm bells for parents.

United Workers Union delegates have backed a 25 per cent pay rise, but it is too early to say how long the proceedings will take, or the size or timing of any pay rises.

“The frank reality is that many employers in this sector simply don’t have the capacity to absorb or pass on wage increases of that magnitude, particularly when also having to comply with mandatory staff-to-child ratios,” Mr Willox said.

“The other big concern is that a deal is going to be struck ­between a small group of employers which ultimately will result in other employers that have played no part in the negotiations later being roped into the coverage of the agreement.

“The big question that needs to be answered is whether the government intends to subsidise any wage increases that employers offer in the childcare sector and, crucially, if it is, will this support be provided uniformly across the sector regardless of whether an employer and their workforce want to be a party to a union-­negotiated multi-employer agreement?”

Meanwhile, unions and ­Qantas have clashed over the airline’s use of labour hire, with ACTU secretary Sally McManus calling the company the “poster child for gaming the system”.

Qantas hit back at the criticism, saying “there appears to be a concerted effort to paint Qantas as doing something nefarious, ­despite the high wages we pay”.

As part of a union campaign in support of Labor’s proposed same job, same pay laws, the ACTU ­released research that it said showed how Qantas had split its cabin crew workforce across 14 companies and contractors to “drive down wages and ­conditions”.

The ACTU said cabin crew had been contracted to various hire companies, most owned by Qantas, to work side-by-side with directly employed crew. “Some of these labour hire cabin crew earn less than half the directly employed crew and miss out on penalty rates, have less job security, and have a harder time with work/life balance as they can get less than two hours’ notice of a shift,” the research says.

A Qantas plane on the tarmac at Sydney International Airport. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Ms McManus said: “On some Qantas domestic flights, you might see five different rates of pay on the same plane.

“Flight attendants are doing the same job and being paid different wages. It’s the same beef or chicken, the same emergency procedures, but it’s vastly different rates of pay. If we continue to allow the biggest companies … to use these loop­holes, it spreads everywhere, cutting wages and job security across the workforce.

“Qantas is the poster child for gaming the system to meet the KPIs of executives. They love legal loopholes and spend their time finding them so they can ­exploit them, just like JobKeeper and paying tax.”

In a statement, the airline said “there appears to be a concerted effort to paint Qantas as doing something nefarious despite the high wages we pay, the training we invest in and the highly competitive sector in which we operate”. “Other companies, including airlines, have arrangements with similar outcomes but don’t seem to generate the same criticism,” it said.

“That includes the public sector, which has many employees on grandfathered conditions working next to people on more modern arrangements.”