Businesses and unions have found “common ground” on workplace issues ahead of the Albanese government’s much-anticipated Jobs and Skills Summit which starts on Thursday.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and Business Council of Australia (BCA) released a joint statement on the eve of the summmit agreeing it was an opportunity to “come together and collaborate”.
To achieve this vision, they laid out a set of agreed principles and policy suggestions on issues including:
- Increasing paid parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks
- Driving innovation and investment and establishing a National Energy Transition Authority
- Rebalancing the migration system with improved pathways to permanent residency for temporary visa holders while protecting Australian jobs
- Reforming the bargaining system under the Fair Work Act so it’s simpler, fairer, and more accessible
“We’re pleased to have worked with the ACTU to find common ground ahead of the summit,” Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott said in the joint media release.
“We don’t agree on everything but where we can find solutions, of course we should.”
ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said the agreement showed what was possible when employers and unions came together.
“Getting wages moving is essential for our country. Working people and their families need the Government to act to fix the problems that have been holding us back so that everyone shares in the prosperity of our nation,” she said.
Who’s going? What’s on the agenda?
The Albanese government’s Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra will welcome no less than 142 separate parties at a series of industry roundtables.
Their goal is easier said than done: Overhauling Australia’s industrial bargaining and education systems to drive higher living standards for a greater proportion of Australians.
And it’s broadly agreed that current workplace and education laws aren’t achieving this goal and are instead contributing to a massive stagnation in productivity and wages growth.
But while there’s consensus on broad principles like the need to address this by fostering full employment and allowing all Australians to access quality education and training, there are also big disagreements.
Unions want to overhaul workplace bargaining and skills training to turn around decades of a growing share of national income flowing into profits rather than the pockets of working people.
Employer groups, meanwhile, are calling for renewed “flexibility” and “simplicity” in the industrial relations system to turn the dial on stagnating productivity growth and address huge labour shortages.
And then there are social services advocates and other academics, who are highlighting other issues – including the poverty-level JobSeeker payment and the persistent gender pay gap.
RMIT University’s Professor Anthony Forsyth, who is heading to the summit as an invited expert, is optimistic about the prospect of progress on much-needed education and training reforms.
But he’s less confident about whether there will be much agreement on industrial relations policy.
“There’s a lot of agreement on skills and training issues,” he told TND.
“It gets trickier when we start to look at industrial relations and the migration system though.”
At the conclusion of the summit on Friday, Labor is expected to take whatever consensus emerges and develop an employment white paper based on it.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said, however, that he won’t rely on unanimous consensus to forge ahead with new industrial policies.
So what’s on the agenda for the major players heading into the summit?
The ACTU
The Australian Council of Trade Unions has published several reports leading into the summit and has even reached in-principle agreements with employer groups about key education issues.
Areas of potential compromise include the need for additional vocational training funding and possible tweaks to enterprise bargaining to make it easier to deal with the industrial umpire.
But sticking points remain, especially around the ACTU’s calls for multi-employer bargaining which, despite a deal with the small business lobby, is still opposed by major employer bodies.
Key issues the ACTU wants the jobs summit to address include:
- Implementing a system of multi-employer or sector-wide industrial bargaining
- Guaranteeing 70 per cent of public vocational training funding for TAFEs
- Funding a 50 per cent wage subsidy for employed apprentices, with 25 per cent of the subsidy going to the apprentice as a retention bonus
- Tripling paid parental leave from 18 to 26 weeks and taking steps to “progressively” make early childhood education and care free and accessible, including by bringing forward increases to childcare subsidies from July 1, 2023 to January 1.
Peak employer groups
The Business Council of Australia (BCA), Australian Industry Group (AI Group) and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) are broadly aligned on their summit priorities.
They’re calling for an overhaul of enterprise bargaining, including a scaling back or scrapping of the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT), which stipulates that an enterprise agreement cannot make any workers worse off than their underlying award conditions.
These groups also vigorously oppose multi-employer bargaining, which is a key sticking point on the industrial relations side of the jobs summit.
The Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA) is somewhat different, largely because its members rely much more on the award system than enterprise agreements.
It wants the award system to be drastically simplified, including unfair dismissal laws, which it argues are difficult for firms to navigate.
Key areas the BCA wants the jobs summit to address include:
- A nationally consistent skills guarantee funded as a right for all Australians
- Ability for employers with a “strong record” of training and hiring local workers to access a “trusted trainer” system that assists their access to skilled migration
- Reforming the national construction fund to mandate a focus on a “small number of internationally significant” industries primed for future growth
- Create a strategy to build new infrastructure for the clean energy transition before moving away from “incumbent systems”.
Advocates highlight key issues
The jobs summit isn’t just a gathering of union and employer groups.
Other advocates, including those representing Australia’s social services system, have also weighed in on key issues.
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has highlighted the need to lift Australia’s poverty-level JobSeeker payment as a vital part of reforming the way the industrial relations, skills and training systems work for the most vulnerable workers.
Key areas ACOSS wants the jobs summit to address include:
- Introduction of a jobs and training offer for those experiencing long-term unemployment
- Reforming employment services by moving away from a “harmful compliance approach” to “genuine practical help to secure employment”
- Raising JobSeeker and related income-support payments from $46 to $70 per day
- Lift minimum wages and establish a legislative link between the minimum wage and JobSeeker.
