Fair Work to loom over fossil fuel energy transition negotiations

Already a subscriber?Business fears unions will hit employers with costly redundancy demands after Labor said it would furnish the Fair Work Commission with broad powers to explicitly intervene in negotiations overLabor’s move was included in legislation tabled in parliament on Wednesday to establish the Net Zero Transition Authority, surprising power station owners who condemned the measure as “unnecessary” given their track record of working with local governments and unions to manage plant...

The legislation would allow a union to apply for orders that employers take certain actions to support the transitioning workforce, such as providing paid time off to get career planning or training, funding that training, or engaging other employers to hire the workers. “The potential burden that this will impose on employers, including many smaller employers that may be affected, needs to be carefully considered when working through the transition.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry workplace relations director Jessica Tinsley cautioned that “it was important additional costs and obligations are not passed down the contractual chain to small and medium enterprises by these larger businesses”.“The government must ensure that these employers, who will already be worse off because of the net zero transition, are not left behind,” she said.

“Our members have been working for a number of years with governments, regional bodies and local workforces on planning for plant closures. They do so with the best interests of workers and the local community in mind,” she said.Unions have been pushing for federal regulation after employers’ failure to transition hundreds of retrenched workers from Victoria’s Hazelwood power station in 2017.

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