Bosses’ election demands: axe pay rises   
December 5, 2024 ACTU
Employer lobby groups have made their submissions to the review into the Albanese Government’s industrial relations changes and are demanding large parts be repealed. 

Employer groups, mostly representing big business, have honed in on the specific measures that have led to more real wage growth in the past 12 months than under all nine years of the Coalition.

The measures employer groups want axed include multi-employer bargaining, repealing wage cutting and wage theft prevention measures and all the reforms that have led to the revival of enterprise bargaining.

On top of these demands, employer groups are demanding job security protections be stripped from workers with the repealing of rights for casuals and rights to permanency for people on fixed term contracts.

The Secure Jobs Better Pay reforms have led to an increase in workers covered by collective bargaining agreements, from 1.8 million prior to the reforms to 2.2 million since the new laws passed, with the number continuing to grow quickly.

The extra 400,000 Australians covered under collective agreements is estimated to have boosted overall wage growth by 0.5 percentage points – adding $6.3 billion to workers’ wages in the last year.

A worker starting out on $77,000 is now about $1,232 better off annually, of which $385 has come from improvements in bargaining driven by these new measures. For some workers, the pay boost is more as workers on collective agreements typically earn $100 a week more than the average of all employees.

Quotes attributable to ACTU Secretary, Sally McManus:

“Labor has delivered on their promise to get wages moving and now employers are demanding the axe be taken to the reforms that made this happen. They want a return to the days when getting pay rises was extremely hard because employers had all the power.

“The engine room of wage growth is collective bargaining, and it has rebounded because of Labor’s reforms. Employers want the laws that got wages moving to be abolished.

“Permanent jobs are at a record high as employers can no longer preference casual and fixed term work. This has made a huge difference to the lives of Australians who are benefiting from more reliable income and greater job security.

“Peter Dutton voted against every single improvement to workers’ rights, now the big business lobby want these rights stripped from workers, which will inevitably lead to real pay cuts for working Australians and no one can afford that.”