A major-win for Australian unions has been strongly opposed by the Minerals Council of Australia.
The Federal Government will move to re-legislate multi-employer bargaining by late 2022, after prolonged advocacy from academics and unions at the recent 2022 Jobs and Skills Summit.
Multi-employer bargaining will allow unions to negotiate enterprise agreements with more than one employer at a time, increasing their bargaining power and allowing for industry-wide protected strike action.
Though currently banned, multi-employer bargaining persists in some heavily-unionised industries, such as the construction sector, and has historically driven higher wage growth for employees.
According to the Wage Price index, wage increases for the construction sector average five per cent, nearly double that of the private sector (2.7 per cent).
The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) strongly opposes the re-introduction of multi-employer bargaining, suggesting that it was a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that is counterintuitive to nuanced negotiations.
MCA Chief Executive Officer, Tania Constable, said the decision would ‘turn back the clock’ on enterprise agreements.
“Multi-employer bargaining would shoehorn diverse employers and employees into one-size-fits-all agreements, and enable unions to shut down whole industries – or large segments – with protected industrial action over matters not relevant to the performance of individual operations,” Ms Constable said.
“Compelling bargaining across mining operations will not foster greater cooperation, increase productivity, boost wages and create jobs.
“Mining employers and employees already bargain successfully at the enterprise level for above-award wages and conditions.
“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.”
Ms Constable instead suggested that productivity gains were the key to driving wage growth.
“Fifty nine per cent of mining workers are covered by individual agreements on terms and conditions above enterprise agreements. Only one per cent are dependent on awards for their wages and conditions,” Ms Constable said.
“The policy opportunity for high-paying industries like mining is to make enterprise bargaining more attractive by improving its capacity to support real wages growth through productivity gains.
“In turn, this will help attract international investment in mining, minerals processing and related manufacturing, which is crucial to realising the government’s ambition of a ‘future made in Australia’.”
