Business and unions soften stance on industry-wide bargaining and better off overall test | AngusGthompson & jamesmassola
Business Council head Jennifer Westacott says she is open to viewing a detailed proposition on industry-wide bargaining while the head of the union movement, Sally McManus, has said the better off overall test could be simplified, in signals key organisations are prepared to give ground.
Employer groups have been pushing for an overhaul of the better off overall test, or BOOT, a legal threshold that ensures individual workers don’t go backwards in enterprise bargaining, by scrapping clauses to do with hypothetical scenarios and allowing the ratification of agreements that have majority workforce backing.
Westacott said she and McManus were seeking to revive key principles of an abandoned recent agreement between the two organisations on industrial relations reform, including changing the better off overall test. Chalmers said Australia’s system of enterprise bargaining was “broken” and had not delivered decent pay rises.Amid a push for a return to industry-wide bargaining – a move that has drawn fire from business – Chalmers said that “any idea that is about getting wages growing again, after almost a decade of deliberate wage suppression and wage stagnation belongs at the summit”.
ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar said the joint list of recommendations was a “powerful demonstration by peak business and union organisations that there is a genuine willingness to work together where we share common ground”.”The best way to grow our workforce and future-proof against recurring shortages is by training Australians.
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