Adam Bandt says Greens will amend Labor’s industrial relations laws if they have the balance of power

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Greens have promised to push for a return to industry-level bargaining in an effort to court union votes away from Labor.

The Greens’ industrial relations spokesman, Adam Bandt, will make the commitment in a speech to the Health Services Union’s national conference on Thursday.

Industry-level bargaining – in which unions can negotiate with multiple employers for uniform conditions rather than workplace by workplace – is one of the key demands of the Australian Council of Trade Union’s Change the Rules campaign.

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The union movement believes the change to the Labor government’s Fair Work Act – which restricts bargaining to the enterprise level – would increase their bargaining power and help overcome wage stagnation.

In an excerpt of Bandt’s speech, seen by Guardian Australia, the Melbourne MP argues that workers “should be able to bargain for a ‘hard floor’ across their industry” so employers compete on service quality not “how cheaply they can engage their staff”.

Bandt promises that if the Greens have the balance of power in the Senate they will amend Labor’s industrial relations laws “so that workers can force whoever is pulling the purse strings to come to the table”, including bargaining with the government for improved funding in the health and community service sectors.

“And if it is not in the bill the next government bowls up, we will also move to amend Labor’s laws so that workers in all sectors can collectively choose the level they want to bargain at, whether the workplace, industry or some other level,” he says.

“The Fair Work Act makes it nigh on impossible to get a level playing field applying to the same kind of work across different workplaces.”

Labor has not ruled out allowing unions to go on strike for industry-wide conditions but has so far only committed to examine increasing the bargaining power of workers in low-paid industries and ensuring that labour hire firms are not used to undercut wages.

The ACTU’s Change the Rules campaign – including the demand for a return to industry-level bargaining – will be debated at Labor’s national conference in December.

Labor left and union delegates are keen to include improved bargaining powers in the platform to increase the redistributive effect of the industrial relations system.

The conference platform will dictate Labor’s policy at the 2019 election, with industrial relations and boosting wages one of the key points of difference with the Coalition.

Bandt says that he is “concerned” at reports that Labor “might only give some sectors of workers the right to bargain across their industry but then deny that to others”.

“Labour laws shouldn’t hold back one group of workers at the expense of others,” he says. “And if workers succeed in getting a much-needed pay rise, they shouldn’t suddenly lose their rights to organise across their industry because they are no longer ‘low-paid’. Industry-wide bargaining should be available to everybody.”

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Bandt will tell the HSU that “changing the government will be necessary but not sufficient” to change industrial laws.

He warns the union movement against the “a repeat of the ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, where the union movement changed the government but still got stuck with many of the same laws after Labor kept much of Howard’s legislation”.

“Without a progressive Senate, we can’t change the rules,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.”

The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has endorsed the union demand for industry bargaining on a visit to Australia this week to collect his Sydney peace prize.

On Wednesday he told the National Press Club that laws which “make it more difficult for unionisation and for industry collective bargaining” are a major source of inequality.