Monday, 2 December 2019
The South Australian Business Chamber is calling on Federal cross benchers to reconsider supporting the Ensuring Integrity Bill, ultimately helping small businesses which don’t have the money or muscle to withstand unfair attacks from rogue unions.
The South Australian Business Chamber Chief Executive Martin Haese said the bill would be sent back to Federal Parliament later this week, after it was rejected in the senate.
“It’s time the cross benchers and the Labor Party to recognise that unions which repeatedly and unfairly bully and pressure small businesses, often contravening workplace laws, are brought to account, and the Ensuring Integrity Bill does that,” Mr Haese said.
“In an era where employers are increasingly being held to account for errant behaviour, it is entirely reasonable that unions are held equally so,” Mr Haese said.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive James Pearson said the Bill’s rejection last week was “terrible news for small businesses and small sub-contractors”.
“Union exaggerations and misinformation have trumped the real concerns of not only thousands of small businesses but also a succession of judges who have repeatedly implored the Government to update the current workplace laws,” Mr Pearson said.
“Small businesses don’t stand a chance against pressure from the worst fringes of the union movement. Individual workers don’t stand a chance if they don’t want to join a union.”
Mr Pearson said small business owners across the country thought the Senate was going to protect them, but the rejection meant unions such as the CFMEU had been given the green light to continue their deliberate business model of threats of violence and intimidation, and other breaches of the law, to force small employers and workers who choose not join unions to roll over.
Mr Pearson said that comparisons between corporate Australia and the worst fringes of the union movement overlooked the fact that some unions seemed to be able to break the law with impunity and some union bosses thumb their noses at the law, while CEOs and executives who did the wrong thing lost their jobs.
“There have been four Royal Commissions into union behaviour and still the Parliament has refused a law that would protect people in small businesses when some unions threaten, coerce and bully them and their workers,” he said.
“ACCI applauds the Coalition’s efforts to tackle unjust elements of our workplace relations laws. They have tried, and we encourage them to continue to try, to reform Australia’s workplace relations system, and to hold wrongdoers, be they in unions or employer groups, properly to account through the Ensuring Integrity Bill.”
