Mr Shorten has seized on the issue as an example of a system out of balance and vowed to allow unions and workers a right of veto against employer applications. "What we've seen is literally hundreds of terminations of agreements where, because the workers wouldn't accept a wage cut, they're threatened with going right back to the award which they left years ago," Mr Shorten said on Sunday. Loading But experts say Mr Shorten's claim about the extent of the practice was demonstrably incorrect. "It is just wrong," said Australian Industry Group head of national workplace relations policy Stephen Smith, pointing to Fair Work Commission statistics for the past two years showing that of the 400 applications to terminate agreements annually fewer than 3 per cent were opposed. That 3 per cent included applications by unions or others to have agreements terminated that were opposed by businesses.

Mr Smith said the vast majority of agreements terminated were for businesses that no longer existed or construction projects that were completed and had no employees. "It is not true that there are hundreds of applications by employers that are contested, that is just not true on the commission's own statistics," he told Fairfax Media. "The idea that it is some sort of trend just isn't borne out by the facts." The occasions where employers had used the tactic had also often followed years of unsuccessful negotiation, he said. There is no incentive for the employees to bargain at all. Tony Wood

On Sunday night Mr Shorten's office said he had meant only that hundreds of agreements in recent years had been terminated and there had been "a lot of threats". Tony Wood, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills which acts for some of the nation's biggest employers, said the tactic was not used often but was an important piece of leverage for employers because they could not undertake industrial action in their own right except in response to industrial action by workers. Loading Taking away the ability to apply for the termination of an agreement would shift the balance of power too far in favour of unions, he said. "There is no incentive for the employees to bargain at all," Mr Wood said.

This was especially the case in long-standing agreements that contained highly generous clauses such as when public-sector utilities were privatised and became subject to private-sector conditions and competition, he said. The Labor pledge is part of a broader push from Mr Shorten to provide greater industrial relations muscle to workers at the same time as the Australian Council of Trade Unions is pushing for extensive change including industry-wide bargaining. Master Grocers Australia, which represents independent grocery and liquor stores including IGA outlets, believes any industrial relations overhaul from Bill Shorten will not be created with them in mind. Independent grocery stores had given up trying to play in the enterprise agreement space because it was so difficult for smaller operators to prove that their agreements would make workers “better off overall” when compared to an award, said MCA chief executive Jos de Bruin.