The Albanese Government has confirmed its Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill to be into introduced into Parliament next Thursday will include measures to close the gender pay gap, but IR academic Shae McCrystal says any legislation must also provide a right to strike or compulsory arbitration for workers engaging in multi-employer bargaining.
The Productivity Commission has warned against "shoehorning" gig economy platform work into other employment categories, arguing it could jeopardise their benefits for consumers and workers.
The Albanese Government's multi-employer bargaining regime will focus on low-paid workers and will not permit sector-wide or industry-wide strikes, according to documents tabled in the Senate.
Teleworking, retraining and enhanced collective bargaining could lift pay growth that has been constrained by Australia's relatively "monopsonistic" labour market that gives a few dominant employers the upper hand in wage-setting, according to the OECD.
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations this week began consulting on Labor's plans to change the Fair Work Act, including the contested proposals for multi-employer bargaining and the BOOT, while further details have emerged about the process for drafting the post-summit white paper.
A prominent IR academic has told today's jobs summit that the optimism that attended the Fair Work Act's introduction in 2009 was "misplaced", with workers in the years since unable to effectively exercise power when bargaining.
In a breakthrough for the ACTU ahead of this week's Jobs and Skills Summit, the Council of Small Business has agreed to support multi-employer agreements, while the two will also work together to achieve "new options" for workplace flexibility.
The IEU is accusing the NSW Association of Independent Schools of using COVID-19 as an excuse to breach good faith bargaining requirements and abandon centralised negotiations on behalf of 220 schools, but the peak body says they are still "on foot".
The CEPU has launched a full-frontal attack on electrical contractors' efforts to secure a multi-enterprise agreement, claiming employers in other industries might use their actions as a "blueprint" to use the Fair Work Act to their advantage before the federal election.
A Federal Labor government will consider allowing multi-employer bargaining, but will focus on low-paid workers such as cleaners and early childhood educators, according to shadow IR minister Brendan O'Connor.
