The union movement has launched its largest nationwide advertising campaign since the anti-WorkChoices “your rights at work” campaign that contributed to the downfall of the Howard government in 2007.



The Australian Council of Trade Unions said its advertising blitz would run for the next eight weeks, as part of a larger campaign to try to overhaul Australia’s workplace relations system.

Its television ads begin airing on Sunday with the tagline: “It’s time to change the rules.”

The ads, reminiscent of those that targeted the WorkChoices legislation in 2005-07, focus on families struggling with insecure work, with declining wages and conditions, while the companies they work for bank larger and larger profits.

“Big business has too much power,” the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, said. “Profits are up but working people are struggling to get a pay rise and 40% of the workforce is in insecure work.”

McManus is scheduled to address the National Press Club on 21 March, where she will outline the ACTU’s demands for reform of industrial relations law.



It is understood McManus will call for a shift away from enterprise bargaining – which forces unions to negotiate separate pay deals with every employer in an industry – in favour of bargaining across an entire industry, and up the supply chain.

Wages have stagnated for four years in Australia despite continued economic growth and record jobs growth last year.

McManus said working Australians wanted the imbalance of workplace relations to change.

“They’re sick of one-third of big businesses not paying tax,” she said. “They’re sick of watching CEO bonuses are going up, company profits going up while their own pay falls behind basic living costs.

“This campaign is about changing the rules for working people so Australians have more secure jobs and a fair pay rises.”

The ACTU has already called for the minimum wage to become a “living wage” targeted at 60% of average weekly earnings. The union movement’s language around enterprise bargaining has also hardened in recent months.

A recent paper by the former ACTU assistant secretary Tim Lyons, Organising Ourselves: Rebuilding Australia’s Union, argued for a more militant unionism.

Lyons told the Guardian that unions “absolutely” should be prepared to take industrial actions that are unlawful under the current enterprise bargaining system, such as walkouts.

“If the formal system for getting a pay rise doesn’t work, we’re entitled to ignore it,” he said. “The alternative is to concede we’re not going to get a pay rise and that’s not acceptable.”

The Labor party’s policy on wages is still being formulated but the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has foreshadowed a harder line on the minimum wage, telling the press club in January that enterprise bargaining was on “life support”.

“Our goal should be a real, living wage – effectively raising the pay of all Australians, particularly the 2.3 million in the award system. Yes we must always be mindful of the capacity of industry to pay. But let me make it clear: we need to fix the disconnect between wages and productivity.”

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, accused Shorten of being a “craven populist” and said the opposition leader had suspended “the laws of economic common sense”.

The government, while conceding wages growth has been “modest” despite strong jobs figures, is campaigning for company tax cuts it argues will create wages growth in the long-term: so-called trickle-down economics.

“We need to bring down our tax rates on business because when you increase the return on investment you get more investment, you get more jobs and you get better-paid jobs because you get better productivity,” Turnbull said.