The Australian Higher Education Industrial Association says it is doing its job by developing a roadmap for securing fast rollover agreements to avoid universities being "roped in" to multi-employer deals.
The Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act has received Royal Assent, stamping out pay secrecy clauses in new employment contracts, paring back MSD requirements and making it harder for employers to terminate agreements during bargaining, while the ABCC has entered a transition period ahead of its abolition.
As the Senate prepares to consider the Albanese Government's Secure Jobs Bill, a new ACTU paper says the legislation's multi-employer bargaining provisions will be crucial in lifting wages in seven of the eight industries with above-average gender pay gaps.
The ACTU says the Albanese Government's push for multi-employer bargaining is at risk of being "frustrated" unless enterprise bargaining is knocked off its pedestal as a preferred object of the Fair Work Act.
The Senate has this afternoon extended the deadline until tomorrow for the report of the Secure Jobs Bill inquiry, which will hear last-minute evidence from the DEWR and FWC in the morning.
As she prepares to step down after 12 years, the world's top union leader, former ACTU president Sharan Burrow, has hailed the Albanese Labor Government for moving swiftly to overhaul Australia's IR laws, including the planned introduction of multi-employer bargaining.
Key crossbench Senator David Pocock says the vast majority of the Albanese Government's Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill is "good to go" and he is committed to working through his concerns about the rest of it in the next few weeks, including locking-in a review of the legislation.
Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke has warned that the prescriptive amendments sought by business and employer groups to the Secure Jobs Bill's multi-employer stream could render it as "ineffective and unusable" as the 13-year old Act's low paid bargaining stream, which hasn't been used since 2014 because parties "gave up on it".
While the Albanese Government remains hopeful it can make multi-employer bargaining changes more palatable to win Senate support, a labour law expert says onerous requirements will limit the effectiveness of the expanded single-interest stream.
