Industrial legislation in Australia in 2019

Abstract

In this 2019 electoral year, a federal Morrison Liberal Government was returned to power with little in the way of an industrial agenda. It failed to implement its key legislation, which mainly included reform to union governance and changes to religious freedom in the workplace. Meanwhile, the state governments, particularly the Victorian Andrews Labor Government, reviewed a swathe of labour law, including wage theft, industrial manslaughter, owner–driver legislation and workers' compensation laws and implemented a host of progressive changes. This year has also seen the continuation of a key policy trend, observable at both state and federal levels of government, towards regulation of aspects of industrial relations by the state that were once exclusively the province of employers and trade unions through a twentieth-century system of conciliation and arbitration.

Industrial legislation in Australia, 2020

“…The WA industrial manslaughter provisions were implemented within the context of a new Work Health and Safety Act – part of a wider initiative to harmonise WA’s industrial framework with that of the federal system (discussed below). The enactment of this offence follows a recent trend among the states, first in Queensland in 2017 (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2018: 391–392), followed by Victoria, the ACT and NT in 2019 (Schofield-Georgeson and Rawling, 2020: 430–431).…”

“…This proposed change builds upon a government proposal in 2019 to extend the term of such agreements from 4 to 5 years. As discussed in last year’s industrial legislation article, extending the term of greenfields agreements disadvantages workers in the construction industry (and their representatives, including the CFMMEU), stifling bargaining, industrial disputation and pay increases, while benefiting some of the largest corporate interests in the mining and construction industries (Schofield-Georgeson and Rawling, 2020: 431–432). Nevertheless, this particular proposal includes annual pay rises over the course of an agreement (s187(7)(c)) and would only cover certain ministerially declared ‘major projects’.…”

“…Meanwhile, state Labor governments introduced a flurry of new industrial legislation reflecting a range of recent state legislative trends discussed by the authors of this annual legislative review article over the past 3 years (Rawling and Schofield-Georgeson, 2018, 2019; Schofield-Georgeson and Rawling, 2020). ‘Wage theft’ or worker underpayment was criminalised in both Victoria and Queensland – a move eventually adopted in weaker, draft legislation both federally and in Western Australia (WA).…”

Australian industrial relations in 2019: The year wage theft went mainstream

“…(p. 80)In this way, the government has criticised both wage-stealing employers and unions in almost equal measure. It has consigned wage theft reform to additional public consultation while introducing legislation to further regulate union activity (Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill; Bray et al., 2020; Schofield-Georgeson and Rawling, 2020).…”

“…A number of the Annual Review articles (Birch and Preston, 2020; Bray et al., 2020; Schofield-Georgeson and Rawling, 2020; Sheldon and Thornthwaite, 2020) identify the government’s regulatory response to wage theft, in particular its proposal to create criminal sanctions, as a defining feature of Australian industrial relations in 2019. This introductory article will thus examine these developments before providing an overview of the eight articles that follow in this 2019 Annual Review of industrial relations in Australia.…”