The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has expressed concern in response to rumours that the Federal Government will legislate multi-employer bargaining in its soon-to-be-announced Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill.
MCA Chief Executive Officer, Tania Constable, said any such action would go against the Federal Government’s previous commitment to consultation.
“Reintroducing multi-employer bargaining would be a fundamental departure from nearly 30 years of bipartisan support for enterprise-level bargaining focused on boosting productivity and real wages,” Ms Constable said.
“To legislate this far-reaching change without consultation would repudiate the Prime Minister’s commitment to reinvigorating enterprise bargaining through a new culture of cooperation between businesses and unions based on the common interest.”
A recent report from the Productivity Commission, suggested an expansion to multi-employer bargaining would deliver ‘uncertain’ results, though did not go so far as to reject the proposal outright.
Ms Constable said the case for extending multi-employer bargaining to high-paying industries like mining has not yet been made.
“Mining employers and employees already bargain successfully at the enterprise level for above-award wages and conditions. The mining industry pays the highest average wages ($144,000 a year, compared to $95,000 across all industries) and the vast majority of mining workers are full-time (96 per cent) and permanent (88 per cent),” Ms Constable said.
“The sustained increase in the number of highly paid, highly skilled and secure mining jobs over the past 20 years (from 87,800 to 277,600 direct employees) shows that enterprise bargaining is neither broken in the mining industry nor in need of radical surgery.”
