Journal of Industrial Relations

2022 was a year of major change in the legal framework for industrial relations in Australia. Newly elected in May 2022, the Albanese ALP Government immediately commenced an ambitious reform agenda for labour relations, convening a National Jobs and Skills Summit in September 2022, and shortly thereafter achieving the passage of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022 (SJBP Act). One central aim of the SJBP Act was to address shortcomings in the legal framework for collective bargaining found in the Fair Work Act 2009 (FW Act), and to this end, the amendments introduced new provisions for multi-employer bargaining, made changes to the agreement approval provisions and changed the bargaining landscape around intractable disputes. This article examines key aspects of the SJBP Act impacting collective bargaining in Australia. In particular, we consider the new provisions for multi-employer bargaining in the ‘Single Interest Employer Bargaining’ stream along with amendments of the FW Act relating to the commencement of bargaining for single-enterprise agreements, agreement-making using small voting cohorts, the resolution of intractable bargaining disputes, applications to terminate enterprise agreements, and the sunsetting of the so-called ‘zombie’ agreements. This analysis of the new legal provisions is situated in the context of recent union campaigns and bargaining disputes at various Australian employers, enabling us to explain the rationale for the amendments and assess their practical utility and limitations.

This paper assesses the promise of the supported bargaining (SB) stream of multi-employer bargaining to address persistently low wages in feminised industries. Introduced in 2022 amendments to Australia's Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), the SB stream replaces the failed low-paid bargaining stream which also sought to widen access to collective bargaining for low-paid workers. We outline the substantive changes introduced by the SB stream: in the contexts of the historical failure of enterprise bargaining to achieve wage increases for women workers; and of gender equality reforms introduced in the 2022 amendments. In assessing the SB stream's potential, we highlight the less restrictive criteria for inclusion and a more active role for the Fair Work Commission in approving and facilitating multi-employer bargaining. We conclude that the continuing primacy of single-enterprise bargaining in the Fair Work Act, the restriction of SB to multi-employer rather than sector-wide bargaining, and the weakness of underpinning awards will limit the effectiveness of SB in achieving meaningful pay increases in feminised sectors. However, the 2022 gender equality reforms offer other potential mechanisms to address low wages in feminised industries, both in wage-setting in annual minimum wage reviews and in award variations through equal remuneration or work value claims.

2022 saw a slight increase in the willingness of unions to use or prepare to use industrial action as part of collective bargaining. However, pay rises for employees covered by enterprise agreements generally lagged those received by the broader workforce. Employees on average saw a significant cut in their real wages. Towards the end of 2022, the recently elected Albanese government made several changes to the bargaining provisions contained in the Fair Work Act 2010 (the FW Act) with the explicit goal of increasing the pace of wage rises. By increasing union bargaining power, it is likely that these amendments will eventually lead to a higher rate of wage growth than would otherwise be the case, though a number of factors may limit likely size of any such effect.

In 2022, Australia's Labor Opposition pledged to reintroduce collective bargaining covering the whole Australian public service (APS) if elected. The elected Labor government is now implementing this ground-breaking reform. The APS has, since 1997, bargained at the agency level with no mandated common terms and conditions of employment applying across the service. This has led to pay dispersion and inequity, and fragmentation of the terms and conditions of employment. The current negotiations aim to rectify this situation. We argue that these reforms represent an ideological shift and a repudiation of New Public Management (NPM) towards a public value approach, which also incorporates being a model employer. We consider whether this refocusing will overcome the problems inherent in the system of bargaining practised under an NPM framework. We examine some of the most important items being negotiated at the time of writing, namely, wages, job security, flexible working, paid parental leave and paid family and domestic violence leave. We conclude that the new approach will overcome the legacy of the previous bargaining system to benefit individuals and the APS as a whole. We further conclude that this public value approach substantially fulfils the government's ideal of becoming a model employer.

Collective bargaining is the foundation for democracy in the workplace, and a mechanism for ensuring workers in Australia have improved working conditions whilst striving to reduce inequality. Collective bargaining offers potential to improve democratic workplace participation and socio-economic status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, however, if done ineffectively can further entrench inequality. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workplace issues need to be at the forefront of bargaining. In the Higher Education sector, collective agreements with universities cover the majority of employees and are negotiated by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). The NTEU uses its bargaining power within the university sector to establish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment targets and other targeted provisions within enterprise agreements. These targets and other provisions aim to increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation on campus, ensure fair and equitable working conditions and challenge entrenched inequality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers within their universities. The NTEU has for over 20 years advocated for and won Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment clauses in enterprise agreements. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee, under the direction of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members has pushed for these for the benefit of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples employed or yet to be employed in the higher education sector. The increase in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment in universities has and continues to be driven by NTEU.

This paper proposes a new framework for the analysis of collective labour dispute resolution. It begins by explaining why dominant conceptual frameworks in IR and labour law scholarship are insufficient on their own to capture the plurality of regulatory sources that bear upon collective labour dispute resolution. The authors then draw on theoretical insights from regulatory studies on the presence and interaction of multiple regulatory orders, and socio-legal scholarship on dispute resolution, to propose a framework that enables the investigation of both the formal and informal aspects of labour dispute resolution and their interplay. This framework disaggregates data collection and analysis into five components: (i) actors; (ii) nature of dispute; (iii) arenas and processes; (iv) interactions; and (v) outcomes. The framework is particularly tailored to, and based on evidence from, Southeast Asia, but may also have wider application beyond this region.

By analysing the interrelations between the regulatory framework, organisational dynamics and gender politics, we assess the challenges for Gender Equality Bargaining in Chile. Several factors in the political arena drive an optimistic outlook: feminisation of trade unions, new working rights for women and a recent labour reform which introduces new mechanisms to foster gender equality through collective bargaining. We wonder how these progressive movements cope with an evolving and increasingly fragmented institutional and organisational context. The empirical work is based on interviews with policy experts, labour inspectors and female union leaders from the mining, retail and banking sectors. The findings suggest a significant disconnect between how these debates are framed on gender politics and what happens at the regulatory and organisational levels in terms of policy design, implementation and enforcement, which ultimately undermines GEB. The article contributes to a greater understanding of the interrelationships between the factors that constitute the opportunity structure and the importance of looking at different spheres of regulation. The paper concludes that progressive gender politics must be combined with more structural reforms to the industrial relations system to pursue more successful outcomes.