With 10 days until the Jobs and Skills Summit, how big business plays its hand is keeping other employers up at night. Firms just want skills shortages solved. Fast.
But observers say there is still scope for some grand bargain between unions and employers that could reduce hurdles and costs for employers in exchange for lifting pay.
Industrial relations, once a priority under the Coalition government, is a distant second for employers under a Labor government, even if it retains its importance for the medium to long term. Any changes to enterprise bargaining will probably be limited to fixing red tape and technical requirements, which employers have complained are holding back agreements.
Labor did not promise anything on bargaining before the election, so the summit is its excuse for consultation ahead of changes.Australian Industry Group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Business Council of Australia are lobbying hard to relax the strict approach to the Better Off Overall Test , which requires agreements to leave every worker better off than the award minimum, and even unions agree something needs to be done to resurrect the system.
But the proposal was dumped after the main employer groups – Ai Group, the Master Builders of Australia, ACCI and the Australian Mines and Metals Association –at what they saw as a secret bargain that infringed on freedom of association. So outraged were they that they temporarily shut out the BCA from their communications.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry CEO Andrew McKellar cautioned against a deal between unions and “big business”. “That’s the big argument for [the other] employer groups to give some ground now and make it harder for the government to come back later and do something radical to the bargaining system.“But if they go into summit and put up their demands and resist almost everything the unions are raising then I think they just deal themselves out of the policy process.”
But ACCI and Ai Group are also too big to ignore. Notably, in his Press Club speech, McKellar stressed that smaller businesses – the core of ACCI’s membership – would hold the key to restarting the bargaining system. “The jobs summit presents an opportunity for government, businesses and unions to come together and find solutions. It is essential for working people and for the strength of our economy that we do so.”McManus’ focus on “systemic changes” raises questions about whether such narrow, red-tape fixes to enterprise bargaining will be enough to kick-start wage growth.
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