BHP says no to multi-employer bargaining

BHP chief executive Mike Henry says there is ‘no case’ for multi-­employer bargaining in the mining industry.

BHP chief executive Mike Henry. Picture: Aaron Francis

BHP chief executive Mike Henry says there is “no case” for multi-­employer bargaining in the mining industry, as Anthony Albanese on Thursday met with Senate crossbencher David Pocock and Labor left the door open to more concessions to get its industrial relations bill passed

As the House of Representatives passed the bill by 80 to 56 votes, the government signalled it was willing to make amendments in relation to the bill’s small business threshold and the single-­interest multi-employer bargain­ing stream criticised by business groups.

Employment Minister Tony Burke also committed the government to a statutory review of the changes but said its timing would be determined during negotiations with the Senate on the bill.

Mr Henry on Thursday said “there simply is no case for multi-employer bargaining in the mining industry”.

“This is an industry where the current approach has been working well. Wages have been on the move. It’s obviously a very high-paid industry.

“BHP’s workers would be in the top decile, the top 10 per cent of wage earners in Australia, so there’s really no case for multi-employer bargaining in mining.

“It’s just so essential that Australia remains competitive, and any aspects of legislation that run the risk of reducing flexibility, giving rise to increased industrial action, and so on, that’s all going to harm Australian competitiveness and in our sector, we are a business that competes globally.”

He said BHP supported getting wages moving in low-paid sectors, but whether multi-employer bargaining was needed in those sectors was “highly debatable” and “in our view, it’s not”.

Asked whether the government should exclude mining from multi-employer bargaining, as called for by resource sector employers, Mr Henry said: “I don’t want to go into the detail because there’s different roads to Rome on all this. All I can say is that we don’t see any need for that specific approach to bargaining in the mining sector.”

Mr Burke said the mining sector on the east and west coasts would be largely unaffected by the industrial relations bill because workers were already on enterprise agreements and so not eligible for multiemployer bargaining.

“There’s a difference between the east coast and the west coast with respect to mining. Neither will actually be significantly impacted by this bill,” he said.

“In the east coast, you largely have work sites where people are already on enterprise agreements. If you’re already on an enterprise agreement, you’re ineligible for multi-employer bargaining.

“The whole concept of what we’re establishing here is for the people who’ve been left out of ­bargaining.

“On the west coast, where people are on very high rates largely on individual contracts, is a situation where even under the single-­enterprise stream you haven’t had majority support determinations be able to get over the line … if they’re not going to be able to get over the line on a single-enterprise stream, I really don’t think it’s real world or realistic in any way to think that would suddenly be able to happen in the multi-employer stream.”

In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the bill, workplace academics Anthony Forsyth and Shae McCrystal warned about the “onerous” number of requirements that would have to be met to access the single-interest multi-employer bargaining provisions.