2022 Australian Federal Election and Workplace Reform

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Secure work

Improving job security has long been an objective of the ALP and the union movement generally. This time the issue could attract more political relevance. Expect to hear the issue of ‘insecure’ work tied in together with the lessons of the pandemic. It has been widely reported that casualised workforces helped the virus spread as too many workers had no access leave entitlements. By drawing this connection, the objective of discouraging non-permanent working arrangements may receive broader public appeal than it has in the past.

In pursuit of this goal of ‘more secure jobs’ some likely proposed reforms will be:

• introducing a nationalised labour hire regime;
• amending the meaning of ‘casual employee’ under the Fair Work Act 2009;
• including ‘job security’ as an object of the Fair Work Act 2009 to give it greater prominence in interpretation disputes;
• extending the powers of the Fair Work Commission to better regulate workers in the ‘gig economy’;
• introducing statutory limits on the number of consecutive fixed-term contracts; and
• using government procurement powers to incentivise bidders who utilise permanent employment labour models.

In short, the use of casual and short-term employment will likely become more restricted, and the use of indirect labour will, in some cases, become more costly and administrative burdensome.

Better wages and conditions

Promising better pay for workers is a common (and popular) political message. Whilst this election may not be described as a “referendum on wages”, as it was last time, we can still expect to hear a lot about addressing wage stagnation and enabling pay rises for workers.

To this end, the ALP will pursue policies such as:

• creating portable entitlement schemes for benefits like annual leave, sick leave and long service leave for Australians who are engaged in ‘insecure’ work;
• ‘same job, same pay’ legislation, along the lines as the Fair Work Amendment (Same Job, Same Pay) Bill 2021 that the ALP proposed last year, which will require labour hire businesses to provide their employees will pay and conditions which are no less favourable than those enjoyed by the direct employees of the host;
• introducing reporting requirements for businesses to report on employee salary data, including any gender pay gap;
• establishing a Pay Equity Unit within the Fair Work Commission and reforming the equal remuneration provisions in the Fair Work Act 2009 with a view to giving the Commission greater power to address gender pay inequality; and
• prohibiting clauses in employment contracts which prevent employees from disclosing their pay information to others (including to their colleagues).

Other areas

In addition to the above, we also expect that the ALP will also pursue policies aimed at:

• reforming anti-discrimination laws, particularly to capture the recommendations of the Respect@Work Report that the Coalition Government has not adopted;
• criminalising ‘wage theft’ at a national level and increasing the penalties for employers (and accessories) for not complying with certain workplace laws;
• consolidating whistleblowing measures, including by introducing a National Anti-Corruption Commission;
• amending the enterprise bargaining regime to make certain kinds of enterprise agreements harder for employers to make and terminate; and
• expanding the rights of unions, including in relation to rights to enter workplaces and by providing for paid union training leave