"The third wave of workplace changes that start today will discourage business from hiring, make it easier for unions to flex their industrial muscle and will hold back our already sluggish economy," Innes Willox, Chief Executive of the national employer association Ai Group, said.
"The Federal Government's latest workplace measures will create more uncertainty and add to what is already a minefield of regulation that businesses, especially small and family businesses, can barely understand let alone implement.
"The changes are multi-faceted and while we won't see the impacts by 5pm today, we will absolutely see them flow through in coming years. As is the case with a range of the recent workplace changes, they are the slowly tightening noose on productivity, investment and competitiveness.
"In these latest measures, how employment is actually defined changes.
"There are new rules around how casuals – almost a quarter of our workforce and mainly young people – are employed. Many casuals could eventually lose their lucrative loadings as a result of these changes as employers increasingly form the view that offering casual work simply isn't viable under the restrictions.
"It was only recently that previous legislative changes and an authoritative High Court decision settled the approach to defining casual work in a way that provided certainty for employers and their workforce. That certainty is now upended with the Government's implementation of a new ludicrously unclear definition, which is deliberately inconsistent with the High Court's decision. Union claims of increased casualisation of the country's workers are just not true – as has been repeatedly shown, the level of casuals in the workforce has been around the same for more than 25 years.
"Australia's one million independent contractors could find they are now employees rather than contractors because of a new definition of who is an employee. For many, the bigger risk is that they lose their livelihood as businesses decide that using contractors is now just too risky.
"The engagement of owner drivers in the road transport industry and workers in the expanding gig economy – which has only blossomed because consumers have demanded quicker and easier services delivery – will be subject to complex new processes and regulation that, over time, will stifle flexibility and the availability of work opportunities. It will only increase prices for Australians already struggling to pay the bills.
"The 'right to disconnect' laws are rushed, poorly thought out and deeply confusing. At the very least, employers and employees will now be uncertain about whether they can take or make a call out of hours to offer an extra shift.
"These changes will affect thousands of Australian enterprises and workers. They won't create one single job or make employment more secure and will actually be anti-productive – which is the last thing our economy needs," Mr Willox said.
