COVID-19: Advancing the Industrial Relations Reform Objectives of Australian Employers?

This article seeks to assess the extent to which the industrial relations reform objectives of Australian employers and business groups have been advanced by the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the rapid changes to employment regulation in the early stages of the crisis, including urgent award variations giving employers in key economic sectors flexibility to alter employment conditions, the granting of similar powers to businesses through JobKeeper-related amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), and variations of enterprise agreements. The article then focuses on the industrial relations reform process instigated by the Coalition Government in May 2020, and the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 (Cth) which emerged later that year. Analysis of the provisions of this legislative proposal, only partially enacted in March 2021 due to opposition in the Senate, is linked to consideration of the reform objectives of the business community in recent years in three areas: flexible forms of work, award regulation and enterprise bargaining. The article concludes that while only some aspects of the employer agenda have been realised to date, business interests have dominated the national discourse on workplace regulation in response to the pandemic at the expense of the legitimate concerns of workers and unions. However, this tendency is likely to be reversed as the newly-elected Albanese Labor Government implements its policy commitments on workplace reform.