By AREEA Chief Executive Steve Knott

The Community Public Sector Union (CPSU) fired a shot over the bow at last month’s ACTU Congress when it described workplace delegates as the “secret weapon” of the union movement.

That secret weapon is now out of the holster – revitalising union bosses who currently have little to no presence in most Australian workplaces.

As part of the Albanese Government’s sweeping so-called IR reforms, the Fair Work Commission last Friday published its final form of a “delegates rights’ term”.

From this week, these bolstered union rights are enshrined in all modern awards and must be in included in all new enterprise agreements.

The first point to be made is an overarching one about the perilous new tipping point for workplaces across the country.

Union delegates can now not only represent members but “eligible members” of an enterprise.

In other words, a single union workplace delegate can run around purporting to represent the interests of everyone who might be eligible to join that union.

This dangerous precedent speaks of the Albanese Government’s real intent here and with other radical surgery it has foisted upon Australia’s industrial relations regime.

It’s entirely about giving unions an egregious tool in workplaces to assert their dominance and recruit new members.

The Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association (AREEA) – longstanding industrial relations specialists for the mining, energy, oil and gas sectors and related services – was one of multiple business groups expressing concerns to the commission on draft iterations of the delegates’ term.

Unfortunately, workplace chaos now beckons as unions impose themselves in myriad disputes, discussions, processes and procedures between an employee and employer.

New privileges include the right for union delegates to communicate with eligible workers “during working hours”. As employees themselves, surely in working hours delegates should be doing the job they’re paid to do.

And what about those “eligible workers”? The implication is they either stop work in breach of their employment obligations to meet with delegates or continue to work during the dialogue.

Delegates should only be permitted to hold discussions with workers before and after work and during breaks. Anything else is a business cost, a blight on productivity and in high-risk resources and energy operations, a threat to safety.

Equally troubling, union delegates are now permitted to “represent the industrial interests of eligible employees” including in disciplinary processes and major workplace and rosters/hours of work changes.

The other key apprehension for employers surrounds coughing up five paid days for workplace delegates to undertake union training in their first year in the role.

Thereafter, the entitlement is one paid training day a year.

Putting aside how ludicrous it is to shake-down businesses to fund the upskilling of in-house industrial activists, the workplace and logistical complexities for resources and energy enterprises loom large.

For FIFO crew, any paid time off for training would need to be taken during the off-roster part of their swing. There would be mayhem if rostered-on employees had to be flown off hydrocarbons platforms or transported from remote mines to necessitate union delegate training.

In view of how the nation adapted to work during COVID, and given the remoteness of many of our members’ sites, why can’t delegate training be conducted online?

Strangely, the training clause is the only part of the term which references an allowable number of delegates for each workplace, specifying an employer is not required to provide paid training “to more than one workplace delegate per 50 eligible employees”.

Given the costs, productivity impacts and operational disruption ahead, AREEA (unsuccessfully) sought wider clarity on a “delegate cap” from the commission.

Should a 1-to-50 ratio become accepted as reasonable, an employer with 5,000 employees may be required to deal with 100 workplace delegates and so on up the scale.

No prescribed cap could lead to an absurd situation where every employee becomes a workplace delegate.

Is there more to come from Labor’s IR agenda? I expect so.

With private sector union membership well below 10 per cent, unions are seizing the day with objectives less about productivity and job security than growing rank-and-file membership and ALP donation coffers.

But productivity is always the key to wages’ growth, not the other way around.

The cracks for business from workplace costs and obstacles associated with ballooning union rights will soon begin to show if they are not already.

All Australians should be concerned about what that means for their livelihoods and lifestyles.