WA miners and business lobby urge repeal of ‘highly damaging’ IR changes

WA miners and industry want the Federal Government’s controversial collective bargaining rules wound back, warning the “highly damaging” changes risk inflaming workplace conflict, stifling productivity and harming Australia’s international competitiveness. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA, Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA and Minerals Council of Australia are calling for several key provisions in Labor’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay laws to be overturned. CCIWA — the State’s top business lobby — is also urging the Government to review the entire Fair Work Act as it warns Anthony Albanese’s workplace changes will do nothing to lift labour productivity and real wages growth. The industry groups have detailed their concerns in submissions to the Commonwealth’s review of the laws, which passed in late 2022 as the first wave of Labor’s pro-worker IR reforms. Employment Minister Murray Watt defended the new regime, which he said was benefitting workers, businesses and the wider economy. “Our workplace laws, which were opposed by Peter Dutton and big business groups, are now delivering the pay rises Australians need,” Senator Watt told The West. “Since we changed the law, we’ve seen higher wages, more jobs created, more agreements and less industrial action.” The laws made sweeping changes to the collective bargaining system, including expanding multi-employer bargaining to make it easier for workers from different employers to band together for a bigger pay rise. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has credited the changes with lifting wages by $6.3 billion across the economy. But miners and business groups are deeply concerned about the immediate and long-term consequences as unions start capitalising on the new provisions. Mining giant BHP has already been forced into talks on wages and conditions at two of its Pilbara mine sites under new rules that mean unions don’t need the support of a majority of the workforce to start negotiations. In its submission to the federal review, CCIWA said many facets of the new system were introduced without “proper justification” and were “unwarranted, highly damaging and should be repealed”. “Some of these changes, specifically related to enterprise bargaining, represent a significant and retrograde step back to the rigid and inflexible policies of the 1970s and 1980s,” the submission said. The industry group wants the Productivity Commission to review the now 15-year-old Fair Work Act amid concerns the changes won’t help labour productivity and, in turn, real wages growth. In its submission, CME recommended four pillars of the new bargaining system be repealed, including involuntary multi-employer bargaining (except in low-paid industries), changes to “intractable bargaining” and the measures allowing unions to force bargaining without employee support. “The Australian Government’s industrial relations reforms will reduce productivity while increasing costs, thereby worsening Australia’s international competitiveness,” CME director of policy and advocacy Adrienne LaBombard wrote in the submission. The Minerals Council said Labor’s IR changes gifted unions six new levers with which to unleash industrial chaos in the Pilbara, where workplace relations have been “peaceful and productive” for decades. “Mining workers in WA today receive around 20 per cent more in wages than the average of their counterparts in the rest of Australia,” the submission read. “Many of these successful workplace arrangements could now be undone, by allowing unions to unilaterally force enterprise bargaining in their own interests rather than in the interests of employees.” A draft report on the review, including preliminary findings and recommendations, is due in late January.