Resource sector employers reject ACTU bargaining push

Labor’s workplace laws should be wound back to allow multi-employer bargaining only when companies agree, resource sector employers say.

Miners have warned against expanding Labor’s workplace laws in favour of unions. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Labor’s workplace laws should be wound back to allow multi-employer bargaining only when companies agree, and the ACTU push to widen the provisions should be rejected as it risked substantial damage to the economy, resource sector employers have warned.

The ACTU is pushing for broader union access to multi-employer bargaining, scrapping the need to show majority worker support where an employer opposes an application, and opening the contentious laws to small businesses where they agree.

In a submission to the federal government’s review into the ­Secure Jobs Better Pay legislation, the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association said the ACTU bid would represent an “outrageous” expansion of the laws.

“Multi-employer bargaining should only be facilitated in Australia where employers agree to bargain collectively,” the AREEA submission says.

“Compelling businesses to bargain together under the dubious cloak of operational comparability risked disastrous economic outcomes and should be repealed.

“AREEA is concerned multi-employer/industry bargaining campaigns targeted at major resources and energy project operators and/or within critical supply chains could cause nationally significant projects to grind to a halt via co-ordinated strike action.”

It says the legislation’s intractable bargaining declaration provisions leave unions with “nothing to lose” and should also be wound back.

“While AREEA members were wary of the novel provisions, some remained agnostic in the hope that if administered with balance, the new laws might act as a circuit breaker when unions threatened to strike indefinitely in support of their unrealistic claims,” the AREEA says.

However, any possibility the new laws could encourage parties to temper their ambit positions and reach agreement was lost when the government passed amendments that meant employees could not go backwards during arbitration by the Fair Work Commission.

“As a result, what was initially promised as a good faith bargaining measure has become an incentive for unions to hold out on claims for nine months in the expectation the new agreement will be arbitrated by the FWC in their favour,” the AREEA says.

Master Builders Australia told the review the government’s decision to place the CFMEU’s construction division into administration risked being an “ineffective or “Band-Aid” temporary measure unless backed by further changes to the workplace laws.

Rather than simplify bargaining processes and increase the level of enterprise bargaining, the new laws had made enterprise bargaining even less attractive and “something that industry participants now actively avoid”.

The MBA said the use of pattern union agreements, containing restrictive conditions and clauses that give unions unfettered control of operational matters, remained dominant across the building and construction industry.

“The ability for industry workplaces to implement a non-pattern, non-union agreement is, in practice, highly unrealistic and administratively prohibitive, contributing to an overall decline in their prevalence,” the MBA said.

It reiterated that the government should move to establish permanent special rules, laws and oversight for the building and construction industry in an effort to improve compliance, tackle poor culture, and “stamp out criminality and corruption once and for all”.