Ai Group boss Innes Willox said the enterprise bargaining system had become a “minefield” for employers” and he would be pursuing changes that included ensuring “hypothetical” types of work and rostering weren’t taken into account when Fair Work assessed new agreements.
ACCI chief executive Andrew McKellar said the employer lobby would be raising “practical and reasonable reforms” to the BOOT. “This has to be part of addressing the decline in enterprise bargaining.”
BCA chief Jennifer Westacott is among business heads pushing to revive changes to the better off overall test.Credit:Louie Douvis
BCA head Jennifer Westacott said Labor’s election was “a chance to seize the opportunity and end the deadlock on workplace relations, restore the Hawke-Keating enterprise bargaining system to lift productivity and let Australians earn more”.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the Australian people had made it clear at the polls that they wanted wages to go forward, not backwards.
“There are a lot of big issues to discuss at the jobs summit like skills and immigration and we are up for that,” she said.
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The office of Labor’s industrial relations spokesman, Tony Burke, who is yet to be sworn into a government role, declined to comment.
Labor has a broad industrial relations agenda that includes making job security an object of the Fair Work Act, overhauling the gig economy, addressing workplace gender inequality, supporting the aged-care wage case and abolishing industrial oversight bodies it deems to be politicised.
Among its first actions will be to make a submission to Fair Work’s annual wage review endorsing a pay rise for low-paid workers after Albanese said during the campaign he “absolutely” supported an increase in line with the 5.1 per cent inflation rate.
Labor has also promised to get rid of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which it argues has been used overwhelmingly to target the union movement.
Willox questioned during a forum on Monday what would be next: “How do we get some regulation of one of the biggest employing sectors of the economy, which is known for industrial turmoil?”
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