The key element of the Australian Government’s industrial relations reforms detailed on October 9 is their emphasis on promoting direct relationships between employers and their employees based on mutual respect and regard, the Chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), said. Hooke said the Federal Government’s Work Choices – A New Workplace Relations System will strengthen capacity for direct relationships by promoting a more credible system that is simpler, fairer, more accommodating in its flexibility, and in the legal protection it provides fundamental employee entitlements.
Hooke said that from the minerals industry particularly welcomed the critical reforms:
- Creating a single national industrial relations system – critical for an industry which operates in all states and territories and increasingly structured and operating along global lines
- Extending the length of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) from three to five years
- Better defining protected industrial action, and removing impediments to common law tort remedies for unprotected industrial action
- Simplifying the agreement making process by reducing number of allowable matters from 20 to 16, streamlining the number of standard conditions that must be included in AWAs, and simplifying the processes for legal recognition of AWAs.
These reforms come at a time when the Australian minerals industry is growing strongly, is “screaming out” for skilled employees, and is seeking to further improve the wellbeing of its employees and businesses by building on a platform of profound industrial relations changes over the past decade. Hooke said “the minerals industry’s workplace performance is testament to the importance of direct relationships between employers and employees. They are foundation to modern workplace relations – in understanding and delivering on the needs and expectations
of each, improving the wellbeing of the employee, the productivity and performance of the business.
“The proposed changes are not radical, but rather the logical continuation of reforms initiated by the previous Labor Government, built on by the Howard Government, and warmly embraced by the minerals industry. Four out of every five employees in the metalliferous sector are now covered by an Australian Workplace Agreement, along with one of every two employees in the
minerals sector as a whole.”
In the past decade, the implementation of more flexible workplace laws have transformed work practices, pay and conditions and productivity in the minerals industry quite remarkably:
- The minerals sector has gone from having one of the worst industrial safety records in Australia to one of the best
- Productivity growth in the sector grew by 7.1% annually in the four years after the first tranche of the Coalition’s labour market reforms, compared with an all industry average of 1.8%
- There are now nearly 350 tailor-made roster arrangements across the country – recognition of the diversity of an industry that stretches from Western Australia’s Pilbara to Tasmania’s West Coast
- This flexibility has been accompanied by a sharp reduction in working days lost due to industrial disputes
- Employment in the minerals sector grew by 12% last year alone and is growing strongly this year
- The industry also pays more than most other sectors. Each week an average minerals sector employee takes home A$1,660 – more than 50% more than the all industry average of A$1,045
- The industry also spends more on on-site training than any other sector – nearly $1,700 per employee compared with less than $600 for the all industry average.
