Unions out to ‘remove hoops’ on wage bargaining

ACTU secretary Sally McManus has expressed sympathy for some employer complaints about the enterprise bargaining system.

Secretary of the ACTU Sally McManus. Picture: AAP

ACTU secretary Sally McManus has expressed sympathy for some employer complaints about the enterprise bargaining system, acknowledging business concerns about delays in approving agreements supported by a majority of workers has some merit.

Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter described the enterprise bargaining process as “excruciating”, and the “most complicated confusing process that I've ever seen as a lawyer”.

Ms McManus said on Wednesday that enterprise bargaining and its process would be part of the government initiated discussions between unions and employers to try to get agreement on industrial relations changes.

“There’s been a lot of discussion around this, and employers have said, ‘look, there’s too many hoops that they have got to jump through’, and we’ve got some sympathy for that,” she told ABC radio.

“There’s about five hoops employers have to jump through and about 16 for working people when you bargain and so you can see that’s a basis to sit down and say, “OK, are there too many barriers to being able to reach agreement?”

He said unions had been arguing for some time for an updated workplace relations system that also suited smaller workplaces such as childcare centres and community organisations where enterprise bargaining is out of reach.

Asked about the Fair Work Act’s better off overall test and the requirement each worker be better off than the award, Ms McManus said the principle that bargaining was about improving on the safety net was a “good one”.

“Having said that, employers have been worried that measuring that just holds up the whole bargaining process does have some merits,” she said.

“I can understand if everyone has reached agreement, and you have got to wait a long time for that agreement to even be approved, that that’s something that in business’ mind will think, “well, that’s not very efficient and that’s getting in the way of us doing things. So we do have some sympathy for that position.”

Mr Porter said the working groups would try to reach agreement to “known problems” including the decline in the number of enterprise agreements and the bargaining process which users found clunky and slow.

“I’ve had the enterprise agreement making process mapped and it is the most complicated confusing process that I've ever seen as a lawyer. And it's just – it's excruciating,” he told ABC radio.

He said how casual employment was defined and the complexity of some awards, including hospitality, were also known problems.