Workplace bill to disrupt productive workplaces

As Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke struggles to have his misnamed Secure Jobs, Better Pay legislation passed before Christmas, the bill is driving a wedge between the government and industry. However the issue is finally resolved in the Senate, the tussle has set the tone for counter-productive industrial relations for the foreseeable future.

This will undermine the interests of workers, whose pay rises ultimately depend on productivity, companies and the nation at a time when profits and economic activity need to tick up to lift GDP and tax revenue. Intervention by way of diverting taxpayers’ money towards pay rises can go only so far. Some Labor states, especially Victoria, have driven big pay rises for public servants. More broadly, the knock-on effects of the federal government’s tapping the public purse to fund aged-care workers’ pay rises remain to be seen. What sector will be next in demanding publicly funded pay rises for its workers? Labor’s mantra in opposition about “getting wages moving’’ is more complex than the party and the ACTU promised.

In a stern critique of the bill, Qantas warned it would place the nation’s “vigorously competitive, efficient and innovative’’ aviation industry at risk. “For the Qantas Group it will almost certainly mean less flying because costs will rise and demand will be destroyed, particularly on marginal routes. This will result in less investment and fewer jobs in aviation, with a flow-on effect for communities and tourism,’’ the Qantas submission to the Senate inquiry into the bill argued.

Multi-employer bargaining, one of the main sticking points of the bill, “would effectively become industry-wide agreements which would undermine the viability of many enterprises’’, Qantas said. Calling time on enterprise-level bargaining would reverse advances the economy had secured since the post-Hawke-Keating government reforms of the mid-1980s.

Mr Burke has pointed to the potentially devastating national ports dispute as an example of why his bill would benefit the nation. But on Tuesday, intervention by the Fair Work Commission, on its own initiative, shows the current system is geared to dealing with such contingencies. At a hearing on Wednesday, the commission will consider ordering tugboat operator Svitzer not to lock out workers on Friday at 17 ports across the nation, as it announced it would do. Acting commission president Adam Hatcher said that announcement had prompted the commission to consider making an order under section 424 of the Fair Work Act “to suspend or terminate protected industrial action by Svitzer”. The commission must make such an order, he said, if satisfied such action “has threatened, is threatening, or would threaten to cause significant damage to the Australian economy or an important part of it”.

In moving to lock out the workers, Svitzer appeared to be getting in ahead of the new workplace bill, which is expected to prevent employers applying, unilaterally, to get existing enterprise pay deals axed.

Svitzer has complained that the current agreement gives the Maritime Union of Australia undue power over management, rostering and hiring decisions. The company has cited local agreements in some ports under which an employee working four hours can receive up to four days’ pay.

As the government attempts to woo independent ACT senator David Pocock to pass its bill, with the help of the Greens, battlelines are hardening as unions and employers thrash out the issue in the public square and through advertising. Miners, farmers, builders, ­retailers, small businesses and airlines are working together to mount a co-ordinated campaign against the legislation. In the most determined push by industry since its campaign against the Rudd government’s super-profits tax, business will argue that the bill will give “absolute power” to the unions at the expense of employer/employees relationships. In successful, efficient companies, those relationships are crucial to pay negotiations and productivity gains. Intervening to impose such a wedge – paving the way for industry-wide bargaining and broader industrial actions – is the worst thing Labor could do in the current economic climate. Persevering with such flawed, regressive legislation will put some industries on a hiding to nothing, for which the Albanese government will ultimately be held accountable.