The Centre for Future Work has released a report which shows that the proportion of private-sector workers who are covered by enterprise agreements has fallen to just 11% since 2013. It concludes that this has been a key contributor to low wages growth of recent years, and warns that an employer-led push to replace the Fair Work Act’s ‘better off overall test’ would further reduce wages growth while prompting an increase in non-union enterprise agreements:
Summary
The dramatic erosion decline in private sector collective bargaining visible in recent years has been maintained. The share of private sector workers covered by enterprise agreements (EAs) has now been halved since 2013, to only 11%. This decline reflects three simultaneous negative trends: declining agreement renewals, almost no new agreements being negotiated, and high rates of agreement termination. Alarmingly, only 46 new private sector EAs were negotiated in Australia in 2018 (down on 68 in 2017).
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Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
