Union leaders are warning that the Coalition’s industrial relations bill will embolden bosses seeking pay cuts and provoke industrial action in retaliation.
The Construction Forestry Mining Maritime Energy Union’s national secretary, Dave Noonan, told Guardian Australia the construction union was “up for the fight” and would do “everything we can” including action in the workplace to resist the changes.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union national secretary, Steve Murphy, agreed that Australia “will see an escalation in levels of industrial disputation” if bosses take advantage of provisions that cut take-home pay and rights.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is coordinating the campaign against the industrial relations omnibus bill, with a campaign, “For the Workers”, asking the government to recognise the “heroes of the pandemic”.
Unions are already reporting they have seen the most significant increase in their membership since the early days of the pandemic, as fears over work insecurity drive workers’ decision making.
On Thursday the attorney general, Christian Porter, denied the government was preparing to ditch the bill’s most controversial provision, first revealed by Guardian Australia on Tuesday, allowing the Fair Work Commission to approve deals that left workers worse off than the relevant award.
Labor has warned the provision could result in cuts of up to of $11,000 for frontline workers due to loss of shift and overtime penalties. Porter claims such cuts would “never happen” because workers would not agree and the commission would not register an agreement against the national interest.
Noonan said even without that section, the bill would be a “recipe for wage cuts”.
He cited provisions that prevent a union intervening in the commission to argue an agreement does not pass the better-off-overall test, unless it is a party to bargaining. The section will help employers pass “bogus enterprise agreements” without a union “watchdog”, Noonan said.
He said eight-year pay deals for new work sites would “deprive workers of the ability to negotiate better pay and conditions”, contributing to pay cuts at a time the economy needs wages growth.
Asked if the construction division could respond with an industrial campaign, Noonan replied: “We will do everything we can to protect workers wages and conditions.
“We’re a union that fights on the job, we’ll promote our views in the media and we certainly won’t be sitting back and allowing hard-won wages and conditions to be ripped off.”
Noonan accused the Coalition of “opportunistically trying to take advantage of the coronavirus”.
Murphy said once one employer used new provisions to seek an agreement cutting pay “the others will have to do it to compete”.
“It’s all premised on the idea that to keep the business surviving, they can pay less than minimum rates of pay,” he said.
“If you cannot successfully run your business with minimum rates of pay it’s questionable if [the enterprise] is socially useful.”
Murphy warned that if business goes “all out to make jobs less secures, cuts rights and conditions – I think we will see an escalation in levels of industrial disputation as workers fight to maintain what they’ve always had”.
“We recognise 2020 was not the year to get everything we wanted but it’s fair at least to appreciate and keep everything we already had.”
Jo Schofield, the national president of the United Workers Union, said the union had been fighting for job security and decent pay for years and the attacks in the bill will “strengthen our resolve”.
“We will appeal across the community and to the crossbench … I don’t see how any right-minded politician could approve the race to the bottom.”
Noonan also faces a fight over the de-amalgamation of the CFMMEU super union, using new laws sought by its mining and energy union boss, Tony Maher, and passed with Labor support.
Noonan said he would not “waste our time bickering with other unionists” and would deal with the law now it’s passed.
“You deal with all sorts of bad industrial laws in this country – but it’s not that often that it’s unionists who asked for them.”
