Construction sector pared from Labor’s industrial relations reform bill as business opposition heats up

Building and construction companies will be excluded from Labor’s multi-employer bargaining reforms and more businesses will be given the chance to dodge agreements brokered under the single-interest bargaining stream, according to a suite of amendments the federal government has tacked onto its controversial industrial relations reform bill.

Labor’s Secure Jobs, Better Pay bill returned to the House of Representatives for debate on Thursday morning, bearing a litany of updates honed through intense consultation between the government and business lobbyists.

Chief among them is an overhaul of Labor’s proposal to install new subsection 178C to the Fair Work Act.

The bill’s first reading sought to give the Fair Work Commission the power to bar anyone with a “relevant record of repeatedly not complying with the FW Act from being a bargaining representative for a proposed enterprise agreement”.

The proposed 178c addition was taken as a jab at unions with a history of flouting industrial relations law, including the powerful Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).

However, industry organisations said the wording did not go far enough.

“Banning the CFMEU from the proposed multi-employer bargaining stream won’t make a skerrick of difference, and no one should fall for this legislative ‘sleight of hand’ approach,” Master Builders Association CEO Denita Wawn said last month.

The bill’s wording also suggested that some employer representatives could be barred from negotiating in either the single-interest or general multi-employer bargaining process.

The government’s latest workaround is to simply forget its section 178c plans altogether, instead introducing a clause carving “certain types of work in the building and construction industry” out of those single-interest and multi-employer bargaining reforms entirely.

The wording indicates those sectors may now be free of Labor’s overall reform vision as the government picks its battles elsewhere.

The bill’s approach to single-interest employer bargaining has also changed, with the government’s new approach giving businesses more leniency before the Fair Work Commission locks them into fresh enterprise agreements.

Single-interest employer bargaining covers enterprise agreements brokered between workers across two or more businesses operating as a joint venture, or as a common enterprise.

Business groups have chafed at the prospect of single-interest employer agreements limiting the ability of employers to bargain as individual entities.

However, amendments to the bill mean “employers and their employees are precluded from being compelled into an authorisation or single interest employer agreement where they have agreed to bargain for a proposed single enterprise agreement”.

Distinct corporate entities can also be considered eligible for the single-interest employer bargaining stream if the Fair Work Commission deems them similar enough.

Fresh amendments mean the FWC can refuse to make that designation where there’s evidence the employer has bargained in good faith previously, or in instances where the prior enterprise agreement has been obsolete for less than six months.

More to come.