A new report from the Productivity Commission has highlighted the urgent need for enterprise bargaining reforms, revealing that less than half of workers in the mining industry are covered by a current Employment Agreement (EA).
The interim report, titled 5 Year Productivity Inquiry: A more productive labour market, was released Thursday 13 October and explores new solutions to improving productivity in Australian markets.
Productivity Commission Deputy Chair, Dr Alex Robson, said a key focus for the report was better addressing barriers to employment to increase the supply of skilled workers.
“This report explores how we might make our business environment more adaptable and flexible, no matter what the future of work looks like or what skills composition we might need,” Dr Robson said.
“The focus needs to be on matching the right people with the right job, and improving and increasing our pool of skills.”
Caption: Consistent with industry-wide trends, less than half of all mining workers are covered by a current employer agreement. Source: The Productivity Commission and Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The report explores solutions to potential employment barriers such as state-specific licensing for skilled occupations, which the Commission claims can be unnecessarily difficult for skilled migrants especially.
The report also examines whether Australia can effectively reduce the complexity of its workplace relations system and remove barriers and red tape that slow down innovation and prevent full utilisation of skills.
Key to this is the simplification of Awards and enterprise bargaining systems according to Productivity Commissioner, Lisa Gropp.
“Simplifying the Award and enterprise bargaining systems could benefit all Australians. Enterprise Agreements and the bargaining process are often not focused on making genuine productivity improvements — as the system was originally intended,” Ms Gropp said.
The need to revisit enterprise bargaining is highlighted by the fact that 56 per cent of employees covered by an agreement are on an expired EA.
