Union leader Sally McManus has called for an overhaul of federal workplace laws claiming the system as it stands is failing employees.
In an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, the ACTU secretary said the laws, which were introduced more than a decade ago, have not been able to keep up with working conditions.
Ms McManus said the laws applied generally to traditional employment relationships, when other forms of work have emerged in recent years.
"The repair to the Fair Work Act must start as a matter of urgency," she said in the speech.
"It was drafted before the full impact of the global financial crisis was known, and before the expansion of the gig economy and the other forms of work which have been used to avoid paying employee entitlements."
The union secretary said the laws allowed for employers to drive down wages and make it more difficult for workers to negotiate for a pay rise.
She reiterated calls in the speech to update the system for enterprise bargaining agreements.
"The current enterprise bargaining system often entrenches conflict and division because bargaining is drawn out far too long with unnecessary hurdles, legal complexities and an ineffective independent umpire," she said.
"Enterprise only bargaining has too often encouraged and rewarded a race to the bottom, with decent employers who negotiate fair agreements being undercut by businesses who will not."
Changes to enterprise bargaining to allow for multi-employer bargaining were discussed at the government's jobs and skills summit earlier this month.
Ms McManus praised the government for convening the summit, saying it was a chance to bring together different views and perspectives.
However, she used the speech to criticise Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's decision to boycott the summit.
She said anti-union attacks were set to continue in coming months amid growing economic challenges.
"The legacy of the attacks on unions became starker in the last decade - 10 years of wage stagnation and now dramatically declining real wages, which low unemployment, increased productivity and bumper profits are not shifting," she said.
"In coming months, we will see the Liberal Party and some of its supporters in the business lobby press play on the same old rewound cassette from the 80s: relentless, repetitive, ridiculous anti-union rhetoric."
