Labor flags super pledge for work deal

The ACTU faces pressure from the broader labour movement to safeguard the legislated 12 per cent superannuation guarantee ahead of negotiations with business, industry and government on industrial relations reform.

Senior Labor figures said compulsory super, which originated under the Hawke government's accord process in the 1980s, should be protected as the Morrison government forged a new compact with unions and business to negotiate workplace reforms.

The calls came as the government said it would proceed with industrial relations changes of its own design should the negotiation process agreed to on Tuesday between key stakeholders fail to reach agreed solutions by the September deadline.

Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter said in the event of failure, the government would attempt to legislate changes it deemed necessary.

But, he stressed, it would be preferable if the unions and business could agree because a consensus would more or less guarantee the passage of legislation through Parliament.

"One way or the other the government has to produce a fix to known problems, but what we are trying to do is bring people into the process of developing that fix,'' he said.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus, a key player, said if the process failed and the government attempted changes that were "bad for working people, we'll fight them".

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said "we have got our eyes wide open on this, we know it is a huge challenge''.

"And maybe it will come to nothing. But what I do know is as a government we can't afford to not endeavour to have this process be successful."

Five points of change

As part of his economic recovery plan, Mr Morrison singled out five areas of industrial relations where it was commonly agreed change was needed.

These were award simplification, the enterprise agreement system, casuals and fixed-term employees, compliance and enforcement to ensure people are paid properly and unions behave, and the establishment of greenfields agreements.

Among some business and conservative circles, there is a desire to return to the enterprise agreement system implemented by Paul Keating and Laurie Brereton in the early 1990s which enabled workers and employers to negotiate specific workplace agreements that were underpinned by a no disadvantage test.

When undoing WorkChoices, the Rudd/Gillard government replaced the no disadvantage test with a less flexible Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) which has made negotiating agreements cumbersome, time consuming and, in some cases, impossible.

This has led to a decline in enterprise bargaining which has contributed, in part, to the flattening of wages.

Views are mixed within Labor about whether the BOOT should be abolished or made less rigorous but senior party figures stressed that the ACTU should make protecting the super guarantee a condition of any change.

"You can't have an accord-type structure on wages but not on the other bits,'' said one figure who asked not to be identified.

Super guarantee

Labor leader Anthony Albanese, who has been excluded from negotiations, said the party held dear the 12 per cent guarantee.

"The accord and enterprise bargaining was successful because it incorporated a social wage including boosting retirement incomes through compulsory superannuation,'' he said.

"Coalition governments have used every opportunity to undermine super, including the current process that has seen more than $13 billion taken from accounts.''

This was a reference to the coronavirus emergency measure which has enabled people to withdraw $10,000 from this super this financial year and next.

The super guarantee, currently 9.5 per cent, is legislated to rise to 12 per cent between 2021 and 2025.

The government says only that it has "no plans'' to try and reverse the legislation but it anticipates severe pressure from its business constituency ahead of the next election to cap the guarantee at 10 per cent and make the contributions non-compulsory.

An ACTU spokesman declined to comment on the issue, saying Ms McManus was entering negotiations in good faith and was not going to telegraph bargaining positions.

She has, however, called for the government to extend its JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments beyond September to help workers.

Mr Morrison said on Wednesday the government would not horse-trade on this or any other issue.

"These aren't the issues that are actually part of the five areas that we've set out,'' he said.

New process

Mr Morrison also dismissed the notion that, like the social wage during the accord, the government would have to bring something to the table this time.

"This isn't some reheat of a process done by a former Labor government. It's not an accord. It's a new process,'' he said.

"It's about bringing people together to see what they can agree on in areas like how we deal with casualisation and full time work, how we can ensure that people get paid properly, how we can ensure on new sites that people will invest money in creating jobs because they can get some certainty over what the workplace arrangements will be.

Ms McManus said there were problems with enterprise bargaining and the BOOT that needed to be fixed.

"We've got some sympathy for that. There's about five hoops that employers have to jump through and about 16 for working people.''

"That's a basis for talks about whether there are too many barriers to be able to reach agreement."

Mr Albanese said the government should not be congratulated for doing the obvious for organising the compact.

"On the day I was elected unopposed as Leader... one of the first things I said was that Australians were suffering from conflict fatigue,'' he said.

"One of the first things that I said was consistent with what I had said for years previously, that business and unions have common interest. There should be nothing remarkable about that statement.

"This Government has been in office for seven years. And for seven years what they've done is denigrate workers organisations, attack trade unions, and said that they've been a promoter of conflict."

One Labor source said the government's goodwill gesture towards the ACTU of dumping its union-busting Ensuring Integrity Bill was hollow because the bill stood little chance of passing Parliament anyway.

Similarly, he doubted the Senate would undo the super guarantee legislation if the government pushed it.