‘White-hot anger’ fires resources ad campaign on IR

Employers threaten to run a campaign against IR changes unless Labor backs down on multi-employer bargaining and greater powers to Fair Work.

Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke resisted Senate crossbench calls to delay parts of the industrial relations bill until next year. Picture: Gary Ramage

Employers are threatening to run a multimillion-dollar campaign against Labor’s industrial relations changes unless the Albanese government backs down on its plans to expand multi-employer bargaining and give greater powers to the Fair Work Commission.

The threat, which was criticised by the union movement, came as Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke resisted Senate crossbench calls to delay parts of the industrial relations bill until next year, declaring he was “deeply reluctant” to hold off changes that would get wages moving.

Australian Resources and ­Energy Employer Association chief executive Steve Knott said there was “white-hot anger” among mining, oil, and gas companies about the changes and these employers had “significant capacity to fund a substantial campaign”.

“From my discussions, I have no doubt that unless the government slows down their plans to rush their initial bill through parliament before year’s end and makes substantive changes, the broader employer community will be energised to run an anti-IR bill campaign that will dwarf the ACTU’s Your Rights at Work campaign,” Mr Knott said.

Steve Knott, Chief Executive of the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association.

He said employers wanted the government at the very least to agree not to apply the multi­employer bargaining provisions across the resources and energy sector.

“We just think it’s barking mad,” he said. “If they carved our sector out then they can go and have a fight with other sectors, but our sector is not going to sit down and just allow this without a fight.

“They would absolutely dwarf the Work Choices campaign and they have the financial capacity to do it. It would be like the mining tax campaign but on steroids. That campaign cost about $20m.

“The industry has got a history of, when they’ve been poked, they will respond and there are enough corporate gorillas in the mining, oil and gas sector who have come to me and said this is not on.”

ACTU president Michele O’Neil said it was “telling and typical that mining companies who are making record profits will spend millions of dollars to avoid giving their workers a pay rise”.

“These employers will never agree to changes that put money in the hands of working people,” Ms O’Neil said.

ACT senator David Pocock, whose vote is critical to getting the bill passed, has expressed “serious concerns” about the government’s bid to get all the changes legislated this year.

While some provisions such as the gender-equity provisions and improvements to the legal test that approves pay deals could be passed by December 1, Senator Pocock suggested more contentious parts of the bill such as the multi-employer bargaining provisions could be carved out and delayed until next year.

Crossbench senator Jacqui Lambie said she doubted “very, very much” that the bill would get passed before Christmas.

“Right now it seems to be suiting all the unions’ side of it,” Senator Lambie told Sky News.

“If you don’t think there is going to be more strikes then blow me over, I can tell you what, I’d put a 100 per cent on it. It will cause more strikes. It will be more difficult for the country. We have got to find a medium here and, I’ll tell you what, unions won’t be getting it all their goddamn way. I’ve about had enough of them.”

Responding to Senator ­Pocock’s comments, Mr Burke said: “I respect the different concerns that senator David Pocock has raised but I am deeply reluctant to delay any provisions which will get wages moving.

“People have had their wages deliberately held back for 10 years and with inflation moving at its current rate, I don’t see how I can deliberately hold back parts of legislation that seek to get wages moving again. I’m hopeful to continue the good-faith discussions with Senator Pocock and the other crossbenchers and satisfy any concerns they have about the bill itself.”

As well as expanding the multi-employer bargaining provisions, the bill gives the Fair Work Commission the capacity to arbitrate disputes regarded as intractable. Mr Knott said unions would exploit the system by making claims they know would never be agreed by employers, resulting in pay and conditions being determined by the commission.

“None of the commission members, with perhaps the ­exception of one, have ever run a business before, and employers just don’t want to outsource that key component of their business to the Fair Work Commission,” Mr Knott said. “In 2022, we have higher energy costs, higher interest costs, higher inflation & commodity prices falling from peak cycle levels. Having FWC arbitrating higher costs for business without associated productivity gains, will most likely lead to calls for a renaming of the jingoistic Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill to the Fewer Jobs, No Pay Bill.”