Bosses warn labour hire laws bad for workers
Big business warns ‘same job, same pay’ labour hire laws risk ‘perverse impacts’ on workers.
Big business has ramped up opposition to the federal government’s proposed “same job, same pay” labour hire laws, claiming they risk “perverse impacts” on workers including more casual labour, increased outsourcing and the winding back of conditions.
The “same job, same pay” policy is designed to crack down on worker exploitation by labour hire firms and is a key plank of Labor’s second wave of industrial relations changes to be introduced later this year.
In a submission responding to the government’s consultation paper, the Business Council of Australia says if the laws are not wound back, they will also have detrimental impacts on the workers they are supposed to assist.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke says workers doing the same job at the same site should get the same pay. While the government says there are legitimate uses for labour hire, particularly when companies need a seasonal or surge workforce, some companies are deliberately using cowboy labour hire firms that exploit casual workers.
The BCA insists there is “no case for change”.
“At a time when Australia has almost full employment but record low productivity growth, investment retreating overseas and pressures from inflation and interest rates, there is little justification for upending the workplace relations system and creating and compounding uncertainty and costs,” its submission says.
BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the changes “would make rewarding workers who work hard or choose to upskill more difficult”.
“It could also put pay rises at risk by undermining enterprise bargaining,” she said.
The BCA submission says the changes will increase casual and fixed-term work, if employers are forced to directly hire employees where they previously used labour hire but cannot do so because of new onerous, impracticable compliance obligations.
It says there will be fewer enterprise agreements as there “will be a disincentive for businesses or workers to negotiate an agreement if it can simply be overridden by another agreement to which they are not a party”.
“If employers are required to pass on ‘conditions’ such as staff discounts, benefits and incentives to labour hire workers in circumstances where it is unworkable or very difficult to do so, they may choose to simply wind back those initiatives all together,” it says.
“Businesses may be forced to outsource 100 per cent of their workforce due to the impracticalities of being able to use labour hire to supplement their needs … rather than be captured by the same job, same pay measure.”
In its submission, the BCA says the government’s second wave of workplace reforms will “deliver significant, complex, confusing and unproductive changes to Australia’s workplace relations system”.
“They will compound the difficulties arising in the wake of the rushed changes legislated at the end of 2022, including multi-employer bargaining,” it says.
The government says it is determined to “close the labour hire loophole” this year while the ACTU says employers do not like the fact that they have been caught out using labour hire to push down wages.
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