Employment Minister Tony Burke has directed the Honest Work Fee (FWC) to assessment the trendy award system to evaluate doubtlessly together with a extra formal proper for workers to work at home.
Enterprise teams aren’t comfortable. Australian Chamber of Commerce and Trade (ACCI) director of office relations Jessica Tinsley mentioned this may have an effect on productiveness charges, whereas Australian Trade Group (AIG) chief government Innes Willox mentioned the assessment posed “a transparent threat of regulatory overreach and intrusion”, including that “flexibility and productiveness” have been additionally in danger. (That is concerning a measure that may assure larger… uh… flexibility about how and the place work is completed, and which hasn’t been proven to have any actual impression on productiveness?)
If all of it appears a bit half-hearted, it could be from the exhausting degree of catastrophising that follows any enchancment in workers’ rights, nonetheless minor.
Proper to disconnect
Most not too long ago, enterprise teams took umbrage with the newly legislated proper for workers to “disconnect” after hours by, say, ignoring “unreasonable” requests and messages from their employer after hours. This variation was apparently creating “huge complexity and uncertainty about how workplaces function” for employers.
“There’s now the actual chance of battle the place beforehand there have been agreed flexibilities and trade-offs … disputes over attempting to maintain a office transferring are actually extra possible,” Willox mentioned.
Identical job, similar pay
The reforms, largely aimed on the gig financial system, prevented employers from hiring contractors at a decrease fee than provided to an worker for a similar job. These modifications would “damage trade, undermine productiveness and lead to fewer job alternatives in addition to greater prices that may doubtlessly be handed on to shoppers,” in line with the AIG.
“The price of dwelling for hundreds of thousands of Australians will rise, and the job-creation capability of companies shall be smothered”, reckoned the ACCI.
It could “impression each enterprise and each employee in Australia”, mentioned the Enterprise Council of Australia.
“The Albanese authorities has declared struggle in opposition to the Australian assets sector and weakened Australia’s financial system,” mentioned the Minerals Council.
Actually any actual wage enhance of any kind ever
In 2023, with a value of dwelling disaster raging and (profits-lead) inflation surging, the AIG known as on the Honest Work Fee to “train restraint and warning” when setting the minimal wage.
“[Our] submission will draw consideration to the actual threat that an extreme wage rise would tip Australia into recession,” Willox mentioned.
In 2022, “any push for unsustainable wages development would possible threat the viability of companies and the roles they maintain and create,” ACCI chief government Andrew McKellar argued.
In 2021, the Restaurant and Catering Affiliation mentioned any enhance within the nationwide minimal wage could be “detrimental to many trade operators, who shall be struggling to maintain their companies afloat following the JobKeeper scheme and the rise to the superannuation assure”, whereas the ACCI argued for a 1.1% pay enhance, and known as the two.5% the FWC went with “untimely and irresponsible”.
However we’re being unfair, absolutely? The COVID-19 period was a tough time, and enterprise teams would by no means be so stingy within the regular run of issues. Take 2018, when not solely was the nation blissfully unaware of the financial turmoil headed its method, but in addition the FWC was implementing cuts to the penalty charges beforehand earned by minimal wage employees in retail, hospitality and quick meals.
That 12 months the AIG known as for a rise of 1.8% as a result of an “extreme enhance would cut back the job safety of low-paid employees and cut back employment alternatives for the unemployed and underemployed”.
Parental depart
Then opposition chief Tony Abbott proposed a government-funded parental depart scheme funded by a tax on large enterprise in 2010. It didn’t go down properly.
“The most important beneficiaries of a paid maternity depart scheme, the workers, get off scot-free,” mentioned the ACCI. “They pay nothing, however the employers who’re far much less beneficially rewarded by this scheme find yourself carrying the total value. That’s unfair.”
AIG known as the scheme “flawed, unrealistic and a deterrent to funding in Australia”.
Any minimal situations of employment
The draconian Howard-era WorkChoices regime, which stripped all however the barest employment protections, appears to be the final time employer teams discovered nothing to fret about in an industrial relations reform. In 2005, within the lead-up to its implementation, president of the Enterprise Council of Australia Michael Chaney mentioned everybody ought to simply chill: “I feel in a 12 months’s time individuals within the workforce will look again and say: ‘What was all that noise about?’ as a result of life continued as we knew it.”
By 2007, when it was clear WorkChoices may properly deliver the Howard authorities to an finish, a coalition of 19 enterprise teams shelled out for a $10.5 million scare marketing campaign to maintain the legal guidelines in place. Memorably, they needed to pull an advert that includes union heavies menacing a small enterprise when it was revealed mentioned heavies have been performed by precise hardened crims.
By 2012, as reported within the then Fairfax papers, enterprise teams have been complaining concerning the Honest Work Act, which changed Workchoices. “The pendulum” had apparently “swung too far again in direction of employees and unions” and there wanted to be, you guessed it, elevated “flexibility” as a result of, oh you already know it, the act was “stifling productiveness and development”.
In order that’s twenty years when there was apparently no larger risk to productiveness and adaptability than minor enhancements in employees’ rights.
