Earlier this week, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) released a joint statement — and said they will both champion updates to workplace relations at the Jobs and Skills Summit, held on Thursday and Friday this week.

According to the statement, the groups will pursue “new laws to deliver workplace arrangements that are customised for small businesses that benefit owners and employees”.

Maurice Blackburn national head of employment and industrial law Josh Bornstein said the recent agreement reached between the ACTU and COSBOA to pursue multi-employer bargaining was a welcome step and hoped similar consensus on bargaining could be reached more widely as part of the Jobs and Skills Summit.

“Our current system of bargaining is a relic of another era when large manufacturing factories were filled by (mainly) men working in secure full-time jobs. That era left us long ago. For most workers in the Australian labour market, it is no longer fit for purpose,” he said.

“One of the consequences of having a rigid one size fits all approach to wage bargaining is that it has encouraged large businesses to avoid bargaining by restructuring. Large companies have ‘fissured’ their businesses by replacing full time directly employed workers with those sourced indirectly from intermediaries like labour hire companies.”

As stated on the Treasury website, the Jobs and Skills Summit brought together unions, employers, civil society and governments to address shared economic challenges.

During the summit, workplace relations minister Tony Burke confirmed that new legislation would enable multi-employer bargaining, which comes with a range of amendments to the Fair Work Act, such as flexible working and unpaid parental leave. One key amendment will ensure that all workers and businesses can negotiate agreements that benefit them. 

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There will also be changes to the Better Off Overall Test to make it more “simple, flexible and fair” and means “ensuring workers and businesses have flexible options for reaching agreements, including removing unnecessary limitations on access to single and multi-employer agreements”.

“Giving the Fair Work Commission the capacity to proactively help workers and businesses reach agreements that benefit them, particularly new entrants and small and medium businesses,” Mr Burke said at the summit. 

“Providing proper support for employer bargaining representatives and union delegates and ensuring the process for agreement termination is fit for purpose, fair, and sunsets are so-called zombie agreements.” 

“For decades, big business lobby groups and big companies such as Qantas have relentlessly and successfully pushed for ‘flexibility’ in the IR system and the changes that have been made have allowed them to escape from the bargaining system. This phenomenon continues to this day. In the middle of the pandemic, Qantas sacked 2,000 workers in order to avoid bargaining with them and their union, the TWU,” Mr Bornstein added.

“Despite those actions being found to be illegal by the Federal Court, the workers won’t be reinstated. Qantas now sources its baggage handlers from labour hire companies. Those workers aren’t allowed to bargain with Qantas under our outdated system. Qantas has eliminated collective bargaining for this group of workers. Instead, it can unilaterally set the price of their labour by telling the labour hire companies that retain them that ‘this is the price we are willing to pay, take it or leave it’.”

As such, a more flexible bargaining system is needed to suit all types of businesses and employees, Mr Bornstein added.

“It is impossible within our current IR system to prevent major corporations who are similarly seeking to deprive workers of the ability to collectively bargain,” he said.

“A flexible collective bargaining system that accommodates the complexity of the labour market is long overdue. That’s why the agreement announced this week by the ACTU and COSBOA to jointly pursue laws allowing multi-employer bargaining for small-business employees is welcome. We need to see effective bargaining for big, medium and small workplaces, for the care sector, for labour hire, labour supply chains, franchises and the gig economy.”