Sally McManus has called for a return to industry-level bargaining to help unions win pay rises and organise workers in industries such as childcare.
Appearing at the National Press Club on Wednesday, the Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary outlined the key demand of the Change the Rules campaign: “equal rights” for all workers including casuals, labour hire and gig economy workers.
The speech was roundly criticised by employer groups who suggested it was hostile to flexible work, overstated the extent of casual work, and amounted to a recipe for jobs destruction.
McManus said the enterprise bargaining system is “so restrictive, excessively regulated [and] is smothering wage growth”.
The enterprise bargaining system in place since 1993 requires unions to bargain workplace by workplace for pay deals. Even Labor’s Fair Work Act does not allow protected industrial action for uniform conditions across an industry.
McManus said workers needed to be able to bargain with the “real decision-makers” who set wages, including companies at the top of supply chains and governments who control funding for community services.
Workers needed “much more freedom to bargain”, she said, including a system that allows negotiation “across a sector or industry should they choose to do so”.
She argued in some industries, such as childcare, it was not practical to bargain for separate pay deals. “The only way for those workers to have the power they need is to band together beyond a small childcare centre.”
McManus also said bargaining should occur “without restrictions” such as bans on clauses that protect jobs by preventing contracting-out or requiring companies to hire apprentices.
Changes to the industrial relations system will likely require the cooperation of a Labor government, and the Shorten opposition has shown it is open to multi-employer bargaining, particularly for low-paid workers and to reduce the gender pay gap.
McManus said the relationship between the ACTU and Labor in government would be “respectful” but “vigorous”, accepting that Labor would not always agree with union demands.
She said the union movement was independent and would “campaign for what we think is right and do so regardless of who’s in government”.
McManus flagged attempts to negotiate with the Turnbull government, including her first meeting with the new workplace relations minister, Craig Laundy, in a few weeks.
McManus suggested bargaining changes would help unions recruit members, blaming declining density on rules governing their access to workplaces and employers who sought to exclude unions or refuse to strike union collective agreements.
Asked if unions should consider breaking industrial laws to win pay rises, McManus did not rule it out. She said the ACTU would focus on changing the law but she believed that “working people have a right to withdraw their labour as a last resort”.
McManus called for gig economy and labour hire workers to get the same minimum conditions as employees, including access to unfair dismissal and collective bargaining, and a right for casuals to convert to permanent employment.
The Australian Industry Group chief executive, Innes Willox, said that rates of casual employment had been steady at 20% of the workforce for 20 years, only about 1% of employees work in labour hire companies and rates of independent contracting had retreated since 2014.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry acting chief executive, Jenny Lambert, said the ACTU’s “war against employers is a recipe for disaster not supported by the facts”.
“Their hostility toward flexible ways of working will place at risk the jobs and options of the very people they claim to be protecting – Australian workers,” she said.
“Ironically, the rules they are seeking to change [ and break, according to their own statements, if they do not get their way] are the very Fair Work laws the unions themselves campaigned for and secured.”