As Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke faced scrutiny over writing to the Fair Work Commission flagging legislative reform to stop employers from terminating labour agreements,unions acknowledged on Monday that they have been lobbying politicians for that outcome.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet walks through a Metro tunnel beneath Martin Place.Kate Geraghty
Burke’s state counterpart,NSW Workplace Relations Minister Damien Tudehope,said his government was investigating whether Burke’s letter to the commission ahead of a Tuesday hearing had broken the law.
Perrottet on Monday said he found Burke’s foray into the dispute unusual and was sceptical over its timing.
“I find it highly unusual that you would flag to the Fair Work Commission legislation that may be introduced at some point and you do so in amidst significant action affecting the people of NSW,” he said. “[It is] hardly a coincidence.”
Burke’s letter to the commission on Friday was sent less than 24 hours after the NSW government warned it was considering.
Burke told the commission he held concerns that the ability to terminate collective agreements was being used as a bargaining tactic and said he was conscious of a potential rush by employers to rip up those deals ahead of his government moving to crack down on the practice.
Liberal member for Hughes in south-western Sydney,Jenny Ware,asked Burke to explain why he had intervened in the rail dispute “in support of unions and further strikes” but the Workplace Relations Minister rejected the claim.
“It’s not unusual for ministers for workplace relations to write to the Fair Work Commission,not unusual at all,” Burke told Federal Parliament.
He said he had written four times to the commission to update it on federal Labor policy including its stance on wage increases,aged care wages and domestic violence leave as well as the termination of enterprise bargaining agreements. On the timing,Burke said he had written each of the letters to the commission to tell it when a government decision had been made.
Rail Tram and Bus Union state secretary Alex Claassens congratulated Burke on Monday for acknowledging that attempts by employers to terminate enterprise agreements was an “unintended consequence” of the Fair Work Act.
Claassens said the RTBU had been “lobbying politicians” to change the legislation since a controversial to terminate enterprise agreements at rail operator Aurizon seven years ago. “Our national office has been particularly pushing that agenda,” he said.
However,he described the state government’s ultimatum last week that it would tear up the enterprise agreement if industrial action continued as “an empty threat”.
Unions have applied to the Fair Work Commission to force the government to return to the bargaining table after it called a sudden halt to negotiations last week.
Unions will argue at a hearing on Tuesday that the government breached good faith bargaining obligations last week when it threatened to terminate an existing pay deal if rail workers did not vote for its latest offer.
They also warned in documents to be filed with Fair Work that if the commission does not intervene,“there is limited prospect that the dispute will be resolved in the short term without very significant industrial disputation”.
“The threat to apply to terminate the current agreements,if carried through,would only inflame the situation,” they said in the documents.
Perrottet last week said his government was no longer willing to negotiate with the combined rail unions over a new pay deal and warned he would apply to terminate their existing agreement if industrial action continued past Friday.
Perrottet denied his government had backed down from its fierce threats last week after no action was taken when the 5pm deadline was crossed.
In their filings to the commission,the unions will also claim that hostile and emotive statements by government ministers have made it more difficult for them to “persuade their members to minimise industrial action and to make concessions”.
The unions claim the two sides had appeared to be on the cusp of an agreement last week before Transport Minister David Elliott told them at a meeting last Wednesday that the government was withdrawing from bargaining.
The government wanted to put a new pay deal to a staff vote and apply to terminate the existing labour agreement if the vote was unsuccessful.
While the dispute has centred on the new intercity trains,the unions said in their documents to the commission that wage rises had not been a major aspect of the negotiations so far.
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