Business is warm to an Accord:
Two of the nation’s most senior business leaders, Infrastructure Australia chairman Rod Eddington and BHP BiIliton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie, have endorsed Paul Howes’s call for a revisiting of the Accord to solve problems in the nation’s industrial relations system.
…Sir Rod said construction costs were an issue that concerned project managers in Australia, but suggested the current framework was not geared to addressing the problem.
“The only way to have a sensible conversation about the issues is to do what we did in 1983,” he said.
“Get all the key players around the table and try to hammer out a sensible agreement that works for everybody.”
Sir Rod said there was a very good reason to hark back to that approach.“Because we know that it worked. It worked in 1983 and if people bring goodwill to the table it can work again,” he said.
Mr Mackenzie said there were echoes of a speech he had given himself last year at the Melbourne Mining Club to get “everybody on the same page”.
“I certainly welcome him putting the things on the table,” he said.
…Prominent industry bodies, including the Australian Industry Group, have also backed the proposal.
But no, say unions and politicians (on both sides):
Workers Union leader Paul Howes for a “grand compact” on industrial relations as “fanciful and naive”, predicting the proposal will “sink without a trace”.
Joe de Bruyn, the national secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, also dismissed Mr Howes’s criticism of pay outcomes in the offshore sector, saying it was the first time in his decades-long career he had heard a union leader criticise the level of wage increases received by union members.
Resource employers seized on Mr Howes’s comments on wages, claiming they supported their position to oppose the claim by the Maritime Union of Australia for pay rises totalling 22 per cent over four years.
Bill Shorten described Mr Howes’s call for a compact between government, unions and employers as “a fantasy”, saying there was not even a remote chance of it becoming reality while Tony Abbott was Prime Minister.
Liberal starlet Kelly O’Dwyer also caned the idea.
As usual, it’s all “he said, she said” bullshit with plenty of name calling and no substantive analysis of what an Accord would be directed at, whether it would work and what it would actually mean. Chalk up another win for the leadership class.
