Coronavirus: Show us the benefits: stress test for industrial relations changes

Unions and employers will be ­required to submit proposed industrial relations reforms for scrutiny by senior Treasury officials.

Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter. Picture: AAP

Unions and employers will be ­required to submit proposed industrial relations reforms for scrutiny by senior Treasury officials who will "stress test" them for productivity benefits, costs to the economy and job creation prospects.

Employer suggestions that companies face up to $8bn in backpay demands following recent Federal Court judgments and union claims about casual employment will be among the contested issues to be examined by Treasury and finance officers.

Unions and employers involved in the five working groups will be required to make written submissions that identify solutions to contested workplace policy ­issues, rather than just rehashing long standing critiques,

Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter said many of the participants would “naturally bring their own research and data to validate their claims about the best ways to fix the various problems we are hoping to find solutions to over the coming months”.

“It is very important that we include experts from both Treasury and finance in our secretariat to stress test those claims and help us develop a clear evidence base that negotiations and policy development can proceed on,” he said.

“Fundamentally, we want to try and measure any potential changes in terms of their effect on job growth because that is the central task facing the government.”

ACTU secretary Sally McManus warned that unions would not accept employers seeking to exploit concessions made during the COVID-19 pandemic to push for changes that were not in the interests of workers.

“It would be dangerous for employers to conflate changes that have been necessary in the COVID-19 crisis,” she said

“Pandemic responses cannot be permanent changes or an ­excuse to argue for permanent changes . That would be detrimental to working people.’’

She said unions should always be at the table when governments are seeking to make changes to the rights of workers. “We have got an open mind in terms of what the employers might put if they put things that are different to how they have approached things in the past,” she said.

“Some of the employer organisations are really just bowling up arguments they have already lost around penalty rates and some awards. They have been prosecuting that for years and years, and been through the award modernisation process and haven’t achieved that. Now they are just having another go so we just won’t have any tolerance for that.”

Mr Porter is setting up working groups focused on award simplification, enterprise agreements, conditions for cas­uals and fixed-term employees, compliance and greenfields agreements covering new enterprises.

A bill criminalising serious forms of wage theft has been drafted and a key point of the looming discussions. Unions are concerned the government will set the bar too high, resulting in few, if any ­employers face jail time.

Mr Porter is looking at increasing the ability of casuals to convert to permanent employment as an olive branch to ­unions ­as he seeks to establish a new definition of casual employment.