Employer group to fight union push to target contractors

The Australian Industry Group will attempt to argue a major new agreement between employers and up to 10,000 Victorian electricians that requires employers to pass on the details of any contractors to unions is unlawful and represents a return to the days of mass pattern bargaining.

AIG says the deal between Victoria’s Electrical Trade Unions and a company called ADJ Contracting is designed to cover potentially hundreds of employers across Victoria, many of which are AIG members or work with AIG members.

It will seek to block the agreement in a hearing before Fair Work Australia in Melbourne on April 4.

At the centre of a fight is a clause in the agreement that requires an employer to provide the union with details of contractors and labour hire companies that they use.

AIG says this breaches the Fair Work Act, trade practices laws and building and construction laws because it could lead to circumstances where the union pressures an employer to only deal with contractors and labour hire companies that have existing arrangements with the union.

“Providing details of contractors and labour hire companies to the CEPU is highly likely to result in the CEPU insisting that such contractors and labour hire companies have an agreement with the union and pay into those funds which the CEPU supports and in some cases which the CEPU receives hefty commissions from,” AIG’s director of national workplace relations, Stephen Smith says in his submission to Fair Work Australia.

Another contentious clause in the agreement states that “union membership shall be promoted by the Employer to all prospective and current employees”.

AIG says this goes against the Fair Work Act, which states that an employer “must not induce an employee to take, or propose to take, membership action”.

“Given that it is the employer who controls the persons who will be employed, the duties which will be allocated and the persons who will be terminated, an employer’s actions in promoting union membership cannot be aligned with the actions of other persons such as union officials or union delegates,” Smith says.

The ETU has labelled the AIG’s challenge to the agreement as “absurd”.

The case comes as the union launches a wider campaign to force employers to favour employees over outside labour.

Last week, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union released a report claiming there could be more than 168,000 people employed on sham contracts in the construction industry.

The union says that ABS data and independent tax consultant analysis suggests these sham arrangements are costing the government $2.45 billion in lost tax revenue.