The policy centres around collective enterprise agreement making, as opposed to individual agreements such as Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA’s) or statutory individual contracts.Agreements may be made between employers and unions or employers and groups of employees in a workplace who are not union members.
Collective Greenfield Agreements may also be negotiated between an employer and a union. There will be an approval process for agreements through Fair Work Australia.
The Participants who engage in Collective Bargaining will be required to do so in good faith. This includes attending meetings, disclosing relevant information, responding quickly to proposals, giving genuine consideration to proposals and refraining
from capricious or unfair conduct which undermines freedom of association or collective bargaining.
Labor has emphasised that it “believes that Australian Workplace Agreements should not be a part of Australia’s future.”2
The estimate is that 5% of the Australian workforce is a party to an AWA. The ALP intends to move all of that 5% off AWAs by 2010. It will do this by means of Individual Transitional Employment Agreements, or ITEAs. Although all existing
AWAs will run their full course of up to five years post the election, upon expiry of an AWA the employee will be moved to an ITEA – that is what the document will then be called. These instruments will function as a ‘bridge’ from the expired AWA to another industrial instrument, such as an award or collective enterprise agreement, and are intended to expire by 31 December 2009 at the latest. Labor’s projected chronology of the transition process notes that the last possible expiry date for any AWA will be 31 December 2012.3 Thus, its intention appears to be that those employees who were previously covered by an AWA will ultimately move to awards, collective agreements or common-law contracts.
A likely outcome is that in a large number of cases where AWAs apply, nothing will be done by the parties to them prior to the end of 2009. That probably means the relationship will become award – free, and the AWA will then revert to the status
of a common law contract.
Employees who wish to collectively bargain will be able to do so. In a unionised workplace, they can elect to have the relevant union act as their bargaining agent; alternatively, employees in both unionised and union-free workplaces may bargain
directly with their employer, with promised assistance from Fair Work Australia.
Industrial Action
With the exception of a stronger role for the umpire, Labor’s new approach to industrial action is identical to that of the Howard Government. Protected action will only be allowed during an approved bargaining period for a collective enterprise
5 agreement; industrial action will be prohibited if it is in support of pattern bargaining; and a secret ballot must be held if protected action is proposed. The only difference is that Labor would assign the responsibility for supervision of the processes surrounding protected industrial action to Fair Work Australia.4