Business and unions soften stance on industry-wide bargaining and better off overall test

Business Council head Jennifer Westacott says she is open to viewing a detailed proposition on industry-wide bargaining while the head of the union movement, Sally McManus, has said the better off overall test could be simplified, in signals key organisations are prepared to give ground.

Just days out from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s jobs summit, Westacott said that while she had major concerns about the effects of sector-wide pay deals, she wanted to see more detail for certain areas like aged care, separating her stance from other industry leaders condemning the union push.

Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott and ACTU secretary Sally McManus.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer/Paul Jeffers

“Look, let’s see how this works and what the proposition is,” Westacott told ABC television’s Insiders program on Sunday morning. “Our principal concern is: Is this the right way to solve the very legitimate issues that Sally is raising around people not benefitting from the bargaining system?”

Employer groups have been pushing for an overhaul of the better off overall test, or BOOT, a legal threshold that ensures individual workers don’t go backwards in enterprise bargaining, by scrapping clauses to do with hypothetical scenarios and allowing the ratification of agreements that have majority workforce backing.

Asked whether the test could be tweaked, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said simplicity should be balanced with fairness.

“I think we can achieve simplicity and then build in very easy safeguards to make sure that people don’t go backwards. You maintain the fact that it is better off overall, but you don’t hold up agreements for ages because there are complicated things that the commission has to consider,” she said.

Westacott said she and McManus were seeking to revive key principles of an abandoned recent agreement between the two organisations on industrial relations reform, including changing the better off overall test.

Earlier on Sunday, the ACTU, Business Council of Australia, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Australian Industry Group issued a rare joint statement calling on the federal government to overhaul funding for apprenticeships and guarantee digital literacy for all Australians.

The groups urged the government to boost apprentice wage subsidies, provide targeted payments to both employers and workers to motivate them to complete training, and fund mentoring programs.