This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Labor is considering changes to industrial bargaining rules and a new power for the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate intractable disputes, the shadow employment minister Brendan O’Connor has suggested.

In a speech to the leftwing thinktank Per Capita on Thursday O’Connor outlined Labor’s intention to take a series of steps away from enterprise-level bargaining, the cornerstone of the industrial relations system since 1993.

The Fair Work Act requires unions to bargain workplace by workplace and prevents them taking protected industrial action for uniform conditions across an industry.

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O’Connor said employees are not able to bargain with companies that control their wages and flagged changes to help women and low-paid workers.

The speech responds to concerns of the Australian Council of Trade Unions in its largest nationwide advertising campaign since 2007 and its Change the Rules campaign which argues the limits on collective bargaining are contributing to stagnating wages.

O’Connor said he is “concerned that evidence suggests that the good-faith bargaining provisions are not robust enough to bring bargaining to a conclusion”.

“It may be time for the umpire to be given a stronger whistle,” he said. “An arbitral power for the commission could be used primarily as leverage to bring parties to negotiation, and to bring seemingly intractable disputes to resolution.”



O’Connor said “broader systemic reform” may also be required.

“When the big corporations, the economic decision makers, source their workforce through subcontracting and labour hire, not only are the workers left without a seat at the bargaining table,

there isn’t even a table to sit at,” he said, citing union density rates of 15% and the difficulties of collectively bargaining without representation.



The Fair Work Act allows industry-level bargaining for low-paid workers where the Fair Work Commission grants an exemption to the ordinary rule of enterprise-level bargaining.

Earlier in March Guardian Australia reported Labor is considering changes to the low-paid bargaining stream because it has never been successfully used to allow industry-level bargaining.

On Thursday O’Connor said in addition to failing the low-paid the system is “also not delivering for women” who are more likely to be employed on award rates, in low paid industries with little industrial power.

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“To date, there has only been one successful case using the equal remuneration provisions of the act,” he said.

“Despite this, the commission has been reluctant to promote addressing gendered undervaluation of work and reducing the gender pay gap as significant considerations in annual wage reviews.”

Labor’s shadow women’s minister, Tanya Plibersek, said last week that “further legislative reform” may be needed to fix the disparity in pay between male and female-dominated industries.

While Labor has made a series of policy promises in industrial relations, such as a national labour hire licensing scheme and an objective definition of casual employment, it is yet to announce a final position on bargaining policies outlined in O’Connors speech.

The ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, will appear at the National Press Club on 21 March to outline the union movement’s key demands, which it is understood will include a shift away from enterprise bargaining to industry-level bargaining and arbitrated wage outcomes in some circumstances.