Big business tells Anthony Albanese to wind back workplace reforms and cut down awards

Big business has called for awards to be stripped back and their number cut, and the winding back of new multi-employer bargaining law so employers can choose not to be bound by them.

A CFMEU protest through Brisbane to the ALP National Conference. The Busines Council of Australia has called for awards to be stripped back and their number cut, and the winding back of new multi-employer bargaining laws. Picture: Richard Walker

Big business has called for awards to be stripped back and their number cut, a dilution of the legal test used to ensure workers are not worse off under pay deals, and the winding back of new multi-employer bargaining law so employers can choose not to be bound by them.

The Business Council of Australia’s Seize the Moment report claims the current system of 122 awards is “virtually impossible” for employers and workers to understand, resulting in errors in how they are applied and how workers are paid.

While the number of awards has been cut and their content modernised by the Fair Work Commission over the years, the BCA says their content needs to be further “substantially simplified” and consolidated into fewer awards.

Major companies, including BCA members, consistently blame the award system for a stream of massive underpayments to their employees and the BCA wants the next award review to kick off with an examination of the “most complex awards which have led to payment issues”.

It wants immediate action to change the more significant awards, including those covering large numbers of workers across retail and hospitality to ensure they are easier to understand and “more reliably applied by employers and employees”.

The BCA is also revising politically unpopular attempts to weaken the Fair Work Act’s better off overall test (BOOT), ­despite such changes being strongly opposed by the Albanese government and unions, and employers failing to secure changes under the Morrison government.

The BCA wants the changes to “allow wage outcomes to be linked to productivity gains”, enable employers to determine “flexibility requirements” and ­ensure the BOOT recognises non-monetary benefits, such as increased flexibility for workers.

It says the BOOT changes should allow enterprise agreements to “fully substitute” modern awards, “not just build on them”, and the Fair Work Commission’s role should be a light touch with the parties left to determine their agreements to the maximum extent possible.

Despite new multi-employer bargaining laws only just coming into operation, the BCA wants them wound back so they apply only on an exceptional basis and are voluntary.

“A workplace relations system that continues to prevent workers and businesses from determining their own arrangements will dramatically limit the capacity of businesses to grow and provide the higher-paid, sustainable jobs of the future,” the BCA says

“The focus should be on encouraging enterprise bargaining that will reward workers, not a system that stifles productivity improvement and results in everyone being paid the same with no regard for experience, skills or effort.”

Citing 2021 data showing workers on enterprise agreements were on average paid about $600 more per week than those employed under an award. the BCA says “it is critical that the workplace relations system is structured around cooperative and collaborative enterprise agreements at the workplace level because this is where real productivity gains can be made”.

The proposed changes are likely to be condemned by the ACTU as an attack by big business on the pay and conditions of working people, while the federal government will not support further changes to the BOOT or a winding back of multi-employer bargaining laws. The government has consulted in recent months with employers and unions about its proposed second wave of changes and will introduce the legislation in September.

As well as labour hire changes, the next wave will include measures to tackle wage theft, creation of a fair test to determine when a worker can be classified as a casual, and; a proposed extension of the commission’s powers to ­include employee-like forms of work, notably gig economy work.