The Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) has finally approved the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) which was sent for code compliant approval in August 2020. The EBA sat dormant for over a month with the ABCC before any queries were raised. When a couple of issues were put forward, they were addressed and responded to by the Union within 48 hours.
The ABCC again dragged out any further feedback until this week!
For the first time this was an agreement that employers, Industry associations, and employees were all in agreeance with, but the ABCC still managed to delay approvals, hence denying employees their due wage increase and benefits.
The agreement with the employer's negotiating group was completed in June 2020 with all parties in agreement with the EBA document, which was then passed to the Fair Work Commission for their feedback.
Any technical concerns raised by Fair Work were addressed and amended within a two-week period.
However, the ABCC still chose to drag out the approval process by a further two months frustrating employer groups and employees. Since 2005, the ABCC has focused on the industry picnic day as one of their ideological obsessions even though it has been around since 1976.
EBAs are based on all parties reaching an agreement which in this case was achieved several months ago. But the ongoing frustration for all parties was the ABCC's apparent baseless delays and failure to deliver a code compliant agreement.
Off the back of bush fires and the beginning of the COVID pandemic we had a responsibility to seek an EBA agreement that would give employers a clear path for employees' wages and conditions for the next three years.
In doing, so we pursued additional benefits for redundancy and superannuation at a time when it was clear there was a greater need for future support.
The pay rise agreement should have been effective from 1 August 2020 however, due to continual delays by the ABCC, employers have not been willing to release the EBA document for member vote, until receiving Code Compliance from the ABCC.
These delays have resulted in employees losing up to three months of wage increases, as well as losing improved redundancy and superannuation benefits at a time when both have been relied on.
The correct process now calls for the employer to release the EBA document to employees for a vote after which, if the vote is affirmative, employers will introduce the agreed pay rise to all employees.
Employees returning to work after many having been stood down, suffering months of financial loss along with the COVID pandemic issues, should have been able to return to work knowing that the EBA agreement was in place, so they could receive the benefits.
Mr Setka said, "The frustration with the baseless ongoing delay tactics from the ABCC were especially difficult to understand as throughout this process we have worked with employers and governments to ensure the construction industry could remain open and continue productively and safely."
