Victorian Catholic Bargaining: Multi-Employer Bargaining
As we campaign and negotiate for a new Agreement covering staff employed in Victorian Catholic education, there are some key terms and issues that IEU members should be aware of.
Because of the nature of our sector, which is made up of several separate employers (ranging from large Diocesan employers down to a small number of single-employer Catholic schools), we have historically negotiated Multi-Employer Agreements. These allow us to negotiate one set of conditions and salaries that applies consistently across the multiple employers.
However, there are also drawbacks to this model. Employees and their unions negotiating Multi-Enterprise Agreements are denied many important bargaining rights that are afforded to other workers, including the right to take protected industrial action (up to and including strike action) or to seek formal assistance to break a bargaining deadlock, unless a Single Interest Authorisation (SIA) is made by the Fair Work Commission.
Until recently, only employers were able to apply for an SIA – and despite the fact that Victorian Catholic schools are quite clearly part of one system, our employers have always refused to do so.
Under recent federal industrial relations reforms, long campaigned for by the union movement, unions now have the right to apply for an SIA. However (yes, another ‘however’!), they can only do so after the expiry of a current Agreement. This means that the IEU cannot apply to the Fair Work Commission for a Single Interest Authorisation for Victorian Catholic bargaining until January 2026.
This would cause an unacceptable delay to the negotiation of urgently needed salary increases, so the IEU intends to ask employers to make an application for an SIA early this year. We hope they make the right choice – a goodwill gesture allowing a constructive start to negotiations, rather delays to bargaining and denials of basic bargaining rights.
Why is this important?
Many long-serving IEU members will remember that last time we took large-scale industrial action, it was ‘unprotected’ and led to threats of significant fines against individual members and against the union. In our last round of bargaining we were confined to smaller-scale actions (under the ‘No More Freebies’ banner) in order to avoid these threats.
The reforms to Multi-Enterprise Bargaining mean that for the first time, IEU members in Victorian Catholic Education have a realistic path to taking protected industrial action or to seeking the intervention of the Fair Work Commission if negotiations break down. We will commence good-faith negotiations in the hope that neither of these avenues are necessary – but having the right to access them gives us a bargaining chip that we have been long denied, arguably in contravention of international labour standards.
Why the upcoming federal election matters
These important reforms were introduced by the current federal government, after significant campaigning by the Australian union movement. The Dutton-led opposition has made it clear that it intends to wind back these reforms, returning IEU members in Victorian Catholic Education to the dark days when they were denied basic bargaining rights. We ask all members to keep this in mind as the next federal election approaches!