The multi-employer bargaining provisions of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill have been widely criticised by employers’ groups. However, even these groups agree that the current enterprise bargaining system is broken, but they have not put forward an alternative to multi-employer bargaining.
Associate Professor Chris F Wright, who researches and teaches Australian and international industrial relations at the University of Sydney Business School, argues in The AFR that the Fair Work Act placed collective bargaining at the enterprise level at the heart of the workplace relations system, but the current laws make it too easy for businesses to opt out of enterprise bargaining while it has become too hard for workers to negotiate new agreements.
Wright notes that the rest of the world is moving towards multi-employer bargaining, as it benefits businesses as well as workers. And that Australia should embrace this once-in-a-generation opportunity to do so as well:
