What is industry bargaining?
Industry bargaining is a common method of wage negotiations in most Countries in europe. It involves representatives of workers and employers negotiating within the pay and types of conditions to apply across specific sectors from the economy.
New Zealand is in the midst of introducing a kind of industry bargaining through its Fair Pay Agreements Bill, currently prior to the NZ parliament.
An industry-level method of award wage negotiations also operated around australia as much as the early 1990s, before the Hawke-Keating government introduced enterprise bargaining (negotiating agreements by workplace).
Enterprise bargaining is broken
Hawke and Keating saw enterprise bargaining because the method to modernise the industrial relations system consistent with their mission to make Australia globally competitive.
Thirty years on, though, it is not delivering for employers or workers.
Unions can be involved in enterprise bargaining where they're strong enough. However, in lots of workplaces there isn't any negotiation. The employer simply puts out its proposed deal for a vote by the employees, then submits it towards the industrial relations umpire (the Fair Work Commission) for approval.
It has become increasingly apparent over the past decade that enterprise bargaining is broken. This year, 27% of employees were covered by a company agreement. By 2023 it was just 15%.
Fears of militant unions
A major concern of business advocates such as the Australian Industry Group is that industry bargaining – backed through the to take industrial action – will further empower unions like the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Union to pursue “pattern bargaining” claims – through which a union secures gains from one employer after which demands the same from others.
There is indeed a risk that extending the authority to bargain and strike across industries will add towards the potency of some already powerful unions.
But this can't be the perennial excuse for not doing anything to provide greater leverage to hundreds of thousands of low-paid workers, doing the vital work that keeps our economy and society functioning.
The ACTU's proposal will not be a return to the 1960s or '70s, when union membership was a lot more than 50% of the workforce there were regular strikes in support of wage demands.
In those times, unions could push for better pay and conditions through adjustments to awards, overseen through the industrial relations court, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. Awards no more serve that purpose, now being a “safety net” for workers on minimum wages.
Why care workers would benefit
Changing the Fair Work Act to allow industry bargaining would particularly benefit workers in industries such as day care, aged care and disability support.
These are highly feminised sectors where enterprise bargaining hasn't delivered for a variety of reasons – including the role of government funding in setting wages, and workers' desire not to take industrial action that is detrimental for their clients. This has resulted in care workers being stuck on award-level wages.
Industry bargaining would enable funding bodies to be brought into pay negotiations during these sectors.
It would also enable workers and unions to barter with other business entities beside direct employers which have influence over the wages ultimately paid to employees.
This is important given the utilization of franchising structures, labour hire arrangements and sophisticated supply chains to obscure the employment relationship between the worker and the business employing their labour.
To take an example, a union representing cleaners and security guards exercising of the identical CBD building must currently make separate agreements with the different contracting businesses that employ those workers.
In a system of multi-employer bargaining, your building owner or building services management company – which ultimately advantages of the workers' labour and determines its price through the contracts it makes using the cleaning and security companies – would be brought into the equation.
In by doing this, industry or multi-employer bargaining would ensure a level arena.
Businesses would not have to fear a competitive disadvantage from spending higher wages than rival businesses. Nor could they undercut one another by outsourcing to avoid higher wages and conditions in an agreement.
This article is republished in the Conversation. Read the original article.
