Unions must be allowed to strike pay deals covering multiple workplaces to help increase wages, the head of the labour movement has demanded ahead of next week’s jobs summit.
Unions have nominated sector-wide pay deals as their top priority for the summit, setting them on a collision course with business.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary, Sally McManus, said changes to bargaining were “urgent” to counter the crisis of real-wage cuts.
Labor’s platform promises to “improve access to collective bargaining” but the party did not seek a mandate for industry-level bargaining at the May federal election.
But unions have been encouraged by comments from the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, describing the current rules as “red tape” because they require employers to seek the minister’s permission before they can negotiate pay deals together.
McManus said 14% of workers were covered by up-to-date collective pay deals – an “absolutely appalling” rate that was far from critical mass.
“That’s why you’ve got a wages crisis,” she said. “If you’re going to fix the bargaining system, there have to be multi-employer bargaining options.”
McManus said further detail could be developed at the summit but the system needed to be “simple, fair and accessible”.
She said the current system – which allows multi-employer bargaining in limited circumstances including for low-paid workers – was “highly prescriptive” and had failed.
She said it was “ridiculous” that workers in sectors such as childcare were expected to strike separate deals with each employer.
“Allowing workers to band together across workplaces to bargain is an essential way of getting wages moving again after a lost decade of flatlining wages and real wage cuts,” McManus said.
Earlier in August, the outgoing head of industrial relations at the Australian Industry Group, Stephen Smith, said employers had fought “tooth and nail” against industry-level bargaining and would do so again. He suggested Labor would not be “foolish” enough to pursue the reform.
But Steven Amendola, a partner at employment law firm Kingston Reid, said Labor would come under pressure because allowing broader collective bargaining was the only way to “impact wage growth”.
Deals struck in the construction sector, where the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) negotiates for uniform “pattern agreements” across the industry, had “strong” terms and conditions for employees, Amendola told a webinar hosted by his firm.
He said allowing unions to seek similar agreements among cleaners, aged care and other sectors where they were not traditionally as strong could lift wages.
In August, the ACTU revealed it could support an increase in migration to 200,000 provided the salary floor for temporary skilled migrants was increased from $53,000 to $91,000.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s chief executive, Andrew McKellar, said this would “kill many areas of the immigration program overnight” and a pay floor of $60,000 was more realistic.
McManus said Australians were “wary about employers’ calls for more migration or temporary visa workers in a situation where wages are not moving”, saying the government needed a plan for both.
