The Minerals Council of Australia is adamantly opposed to the mining sector’s return to multi-employer bargaining.
In a statement, the Minerals Council of Australia said multi-employer bargaining would force various firms and employees into one-size-fits-all contracts. Additionally, it will give unions the power to shut down entire industries, or significant portions of them, with protected industrial action over issues unrelated to the success of specific operations.
According to the Minerals Council of Australia, enforcing collective bargaining among mining enterprises will not promote improved collaboration, raise productivity, raise pay, or add jobs.
The organisation said that mining firms and employees already successfully negotiate above-award wages and working conditions at the corporate level.
The consistent growth of highly compensated, highly trained, and secure mining positions over the past 20 years from 87,800 to 277,600 direct employees, according to the organisation, demonstrates that enterprise bargaining is neither broken nor in need of dramatic surgery in the mining industry.
The Minerals Council of Australia added it also could not be maintained that the mining industry pay growth has trailed behind productivity growth.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data, average weekly salaries for full-time employees increased by 99 per cent between 2000-01 and 2020-21, despite an 8 per cent reduction in mining labour productivity.
The Minerals Council of Australia said individual agreements on terms and conditions that go above enterprise agreements cover 59 per cent of mining employees, with only 1 per cent of workers depend on awards for their pay and working conditions.
The organisation stated that making enterprise bargaining more appealing by increasing its ability to support real wages growth through productivity gains is the policy option for high-paying industries like mining.
This will therefore assist in luring foreign investment into mining, the processing of minerals, and allied industries, which is essential to achieving the government’s goal of a “future created in Australia”, the Minerals Council of Australia added.
All other industries pay an average of $95,000 per year. Still, the mining sector offers the highest average compensation of $144,000 annually, and most miners are employed full-time and permanently.
Australia’s main export sector is mining, providing a record $413 billion in exports in 2021–22. In 2020–21, the sector paid $43.2 billion in taxes and royalties, or 30 per cent of all business taxes collected during that year.
