On 20 March, we published the first in this two-part series about the legal developments being watched closely by resource sector businesses in 2025 that could significantly impact their labour strategies. With margins continuing to be squeezed due to the costs of non-labour inputs continuing to rise, labour cost will come under pressure as 2025
Employers in the resources sector are watchful of legal developments in 2025 that could significantly impact their labour strategies, particularly their ability to engage, utilise and remove contractors. With non-labour costs rising and commodity prices remaining below their 2022 peaks, companies are under pressure to find ways to reduce labour costs.
In this two-part series
The last two years has seen multiple rounds of changes to employment, industrial and safety laws at federal and state level in Australia.
These represent the most significant changes since the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) was introduced. The fact that there have been so many different changes to different laws has made it tough
It is worth noting that under the original timetable of the Hon Tony Burke MP for the Closing Loopholes Bill, it would have been passed as law this week.
Instead, in the face of Senate scrutiny, the Bill was pushed into Committee for examination until February 2024. In the time since, fundamental problems with the
In his press club speech on 31 August 2023, just days before the public release of the Closing Loopholes Bill, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations the Hon Tony Burke MP described the problem of the labour hire loophole as follows:
“But if you have an enterprise agreement in place, the labour hire loophole
So, the business needs to cut costs. It might want to outsource. Redundancies look inevitable. But you need to be sure: so here comes a high-priced management consultant.
Things are getting expensive. Everything is on the table. There’s an enterprise agreement or two driving costs. You could get maintenance cheaper elsewhere. Or how about the
Already stretched HR, ER, WHS and Legal teams are about to confront a (seemingly) never-ending stream of law changes that will require cross-team collaboration to operationalise.
At a time when there are already broader economic and market challenges for businesses, leading employers will need to have sufficient resourcing and planning to confront the
This is The Australian’s 8 December 2022 headline. It reflects the result of its 2022 CEO Survey. We’re not surprised. It echoes the observation made in our previous blog about the new laws getting much C-suite interest.
This interest, and those concerns, stem from the likely shift away from enterprise bargaining and towards terms and
Across a range of disciplines, the Fair Work Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022 will bring a paradigm shift. Indeed, on our count, there are thirteen new civil penalty laws aimed at employers arising from new obligations.
But the most profound change will be in the area of workplace bargaining as our previous blogs
In our previous blog, Chris Gardner and I explained why in our view, if the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill was made law, it would spell the end of single-enterprise bargaining. We said this would happen because many employers would be roped-in or otherwise pressured to join multi-enterprise deals, resulting in industry-level enterprise agreements much