Sally McManus cites 'concerning signs' government is prepared to support pay cut reforms
Union leader Sally McManus has said there are “concerning signs” the government is poised to side with employer groups calling for industrial relations reforms that would cut take-home pay.
The head of the union movement is now urging the industrial relations minister, Christian Porter, not to jeopardise Australia’s recovery from the Covid-19 recession by harming consumer confidence with permanent cuts to pay.
Industrial relations negotiations between unions and business broke down in September after several employer groups angrily rejected a deal struck between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Business Council of Australia.
McManus told Guardian Australia she is on “high alert” that other employer groups will now “directly lobby the government to implement what they wanted all along: cuts to [industrial] awards”.
Porter has said that after “imperfect agreement” on solutions he will now draw up an omnibus bill to best address concerns with the system. In comments to 6PR Radio in late September, he appeared to side with employers by arguing part-time workers are not given extra hours “because of the overtime rate”.
McManus said this was a “concerning sign” Porter had accepted employers’ calls in the roundtable for “part-time flexibility”. Under the proposal, part-time workers nominate the hours they’re available, are guaranteed a minimum amount of work but employers can engage them for extra hours at ordinary time rates without penalties or loadings.
“It’s simply a way to have casuals under another name, except with lower wages,” McManus said.
“We don’t support that proposal – it would absolutely mean wages would be cut … And how is that going to create one single job?”
Employers would give extra hours to existing part-time workers rather than employ more people, she said.
McManus said the BCA and ACTU had offered the government a “way forward” on bargaining for workplace pay deals but there was “a massive fightback from other employers”.
Under their plan, unions could assure the Fair Work Commission that procedural steps to get genuine agreement with workers had been met, speeding up the approval of pay deals struck with unions.
To overcome concerns that the Better Off Overall Test is being applied too strictly, the commission would no longer consider how employees could hypothetically be disadvantaged by roster changes in future.
Instead, if changes made after the agreement was struck meant employees were no longer better off overall, they could go back to the commission for orders to fix it.
Representatives from the Australian Industry Group, the Master Builders Association, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Australian Mines and Metals Association rejected the proposal to provide a fast-track for union pay deals.
McManus said employer groups had offered “various proposals … every single one of which comes down to take-home pay could be cut and workers could be worse off overall”.
These included a single rate of pay
“no matter what day or time you work” – which unions say effectively abolishes penalty rates, and employers argue improves simplicity by rolling up all benefits into a higher base rate.
McManus said: “The government is at a key point – do they do what the extreme employer groups want them to do, or do they protect workers?
“Consumer confidence is one of the main things in the economic recovery. If workers get the message their pay could be cut permanently – not just for the pandemic – that is not good for confidence.”
The government began industrial relations negotiations with a sign of good faith, ditching union-busting legislation that increased penalties for breaches of restrictions on the right to strike.
But in September Scott Morrison and Porter picked up the megaphone to accuse the Maritime Union of Australia of “extortion” for taking lawful industrial action in a pay dispute with Patrick Terminals.
Asked if good faith is now over, McManus said it was a “matter for the government” because unions had stuck to their side of the deal.
Unions had not pressed demands like sector-wide bargaining and calls to reform insecure work and the gig economy, she said, because it was clear employers would not agree.
Asked for areas of consensus before the breakdown of talks, McManus said unions had agreed the government should subsidise small businesses’ access to payroll software to improve compliance with pay laws.
There was also “95% agreement” on a simpler and faster system to correct wage underpayments, allowing employers to agree in the Fair Work Commission to pay money back in return for protection from civil penalties in court proceedings.
“We were prepared to agree to that – it works for workers, who want to see their money back faster. And those employers who were always going to do wrong thing at the extremes … would still face the full force of the law.”
The roundtables missed a “big opportunity to address insecure work”, McManus said, by only focusing on one aspect, improving rights of casual employees to convert to permanent work.
Even that is “uncertain”, though, because some employers “say they should be able to call workers casuals and extinguish their rights”. Unions wanted an objective definition of casual work and a right to convert.