Unions must be consulted

A decision of the new industrial relations tribunal has highlighted the need for aged care employers to include unions in enterprise bargaining.

Fair Work Australia has highlighted the need for employers to negotiate with unions when drafting enterprise bargaining agreements.

The tribunal refused to approve an application for an agreement from two aged care facilities in Melbourne, saying they did not consult adequately with the Australian Nursing Federation.

Now Alphington Aged Care and Mary MacKillop Aged Care will have to renegotiate the agreement.

The tribunal also ruled that sending a letter to employees four months before they were due to vote was not a satisfactory way of explaining the terms of a proposed enterprise agreement.

Tim Longwill, a Partner with McCullough Robertson Lawyers, said the ruling highlights the requirements that employers must now meet.

“If employees are members of a union, then the union will be, by default, representatives of those employees in the negotiations. So trying to avoid that is very difficult and probably futile.

“Health and particularly nursing unions have a strong presence in the aged care sector. Employers who factor union consultation into their bargaining strategies earliest are better placed than those who try to ignore the plain requirements of the new legislation. This is the new reality.”

In its ruling, the tribunal reminded employers that the distinction between ‘union collective agreements’ and ‘employee collective agreements’ no longer exists.

Mr Longwill said that if aged care providers did not take this into account, they would be at risk of being caught out by the changes to the industrial relations system.

“It seems that people aren’t aware of their responsibilities under the Fair Work Act,” he said. “They haven’t really understood what the changes mean and they are now discovering that their strategies are fundamentally flawed.

“It’s very expensive to go through the entire process and then to find that the agreement simply cannot be registered.”

Tags: bargaining, employment, industrial-relations, unions,

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