David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What we are seeing here in the Senate today is yet another attempt by the coalition to attack workers at a time when their side of the economy, the capital, is extracting ever more money from the economic system and workers are seeing even less in their pockets. It is no wonder we have seen this motion moved by the coalition. They did not attend the jobs summit, they are bereft of positive ideas, so they come in here with a scare campaign that industry-wide bargaining is somehow going to cause sector-wide strikes and industrial chaos when, in fact, what we know is it will produce is fair wages, particularly for those feminised parts of our workforce, those with the least bargaining power, those which need the most help at the moment to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.

It is no wonder the coalition come in here with a scare campaign. They are happy because profits are up, and shareholders are doing well. Profits are up, CEO bonuses are bigger than ever, and they are happy—tick! But while profits are up, wages are stagnant. Right now we know that an ever-smaller percentage of the national pie is going towards workers in the form of wages yet more and more profits are being delivered to shareholders, CEOs and senior executives, and we have an obligation to rebalance the system so it goes some way to delivering a fair go. Allowing unions to properly represent their workers with pay deals that deliver consistent rates across employers is not something to be afraid of. It is called fairness; it is called equity. I know that is what scares the coalition. But for most of the rest of the country, it is what they want the industrial relations system to deliver—fairness, equity and a growth in real wages.

Small businesses and others that pay their workers fairly aren't concerned about these moves to put workers on a fairer footing. Isolating workers in some workplaces, particularly those with less bargaining power, has been the history of the last 30 years. What that means is that workers with less power, like those in feminised industries—the care industry, services industries—miss out on the better wages and conditions negotiated in workplaces with greater union density and greater ability to put economic pressure on the system. If change doesn't happen, those workers who have been left behind for the last 30 years will be left behind for the next 30 years, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots in this society will rise and rise.

A minority of employers and their friends in the coalition are still pushing to have workers fragmented, unable to bargain together, because they recognise that workers coming together and fairly bargaining will see wages form a greater share of the economy. Workers looking at their pay cheques over the last decade have seen precious little growth and, often, reductions in the real wages they are bringing home, all the more so as we see inflation rise with cost-of-living pressures. It makes the astronomical housing prices in Australia and the growing cost of living a real and ongoing threat, and this parliament has an obligation to respond.

What we do know is that our economy is more dominated than ever by the services and care industries, and this is something the ACTU has said clearly in making the case for industry-wide bargaining. As the economy has changed, we still have an industrial relations system that is 30 years old, that has failed to take into account those fundamental changes, particularly for those workers in smaller workplaces in the care sectors, often workplaces that are dominated by women. They need to have the ability to engage in collective bargaining and it is best done on an industry-wide level. As the President of the ACTU said, allowing workers to band together across workplaces to bargain is an essential way of getting wages moving again after a lost decade of flatlining wages and real wage cuts. It should be unacceptable to all of us that real wage cuts are projected year on year.

We will not get meaningful movement on wages unless we can move on industry-wide bargaining. It scares the coalition but, I have to tell you, there are workers out there who have had 30 years of flatlining wages who are desperately keen for this parliament to do more than carp and complain but actually give them power, give them a fair wage and finally see a fair share of the pie going to those workers who deliver. (Time expired)