Right to strike key to beating wages crisis, say law experts

Unions should have the legal right to strike in favour of ­industry-wide pay claims, three employment law experts claim

In certain sectors workers should have the right to take ­protected industrial action to solve the wage crisis under changes backed by three employment law experts.

Unions should have the legal right to strike in favour of ­industry-wide pay claims in some sectors, and the minimum wage should be lifted over time to 60 per cent of the median wage, under changes backed by three employment law experts to address the “wages crisis”.

In a book to be released today, University of Adelaide law professor Andrew Stewart, the ­director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, Jim Stanford, and Melbourne Law School senior lecturer Tess Hardy also call on the federal government to scrap caps on public sector wages.

“The contradiction between the hand-wringing of political leaders over the disappointing trajectory of wages, and their own conscious actions to directly suppress wage growth within such a large and important segment of the labour market, is both galling and counter-­productive,’’ they write.

“How can workers and employers take ­seriously the urgings of leading figures like Prime Minister (Scott) Morrison or ­Reserve Bank of Australia governor (Philip) Lowe that wages should grow faster, when the government itself remains determined to freeze the wages it pays to its own workforce?”

To complement the existing enterprise bargaining system, the trio called for a new stream of industry-level bargaining, at least in sectors where the Fair Work Commission was satisfied there were practical constraints on the ability of employees and their employers to bargain at the enterprise level.

Workers in these industries should have the right to take ­protected industrial action, and the commission would have an active role in supervising bargaining, with the power to arbitrate an outcome if, after a defined period, no agreement ­resulted.