Yesterday Christian Porter brought in new regs which mean a lot of the rights workers give up during this crisis will be permanently lost. He claims the change is time limited. The period where the employer can ask you is limited. But the loss of rights if you agree is permanent.
So normally an enterprise agreement can only be varied if the employer gives you seven days notice. This gives you time to seek advice from your union, a lawyer, consultant and other work colleagues. Yesterday he reduced the time from 7 days to one.
That means the employer can advise you of the change one day and then have the workplace vote on it the following day. And the vote can be by show of hands, it doesn’t have to be secret ballot.
Think about the context here. People are worried about their jobs and now they can be forced to vote without time to seek any advice on the impact. Now the change from 7 days to one only lasts during the current crisis. But..... and here’s the huge catch...
Any changes that are made during this time become permanent changes to the agreement. So if you agree under this process to a cut in pay or change in conditions or rights the change stays even after the pandemic has long gone.
There’s been a fair bit of compromise and co-operation during this time to keep people in work. By and large, with the exception of his strange Dunkirk analogies, Porter has been consultative. That is until yesterday.
When Porter criticised certain employer groups for trying to exploit the crisis to gain permanent industrial relations advantages he was right. Yesterday he did precisely what he had previously criticised. Here’s my media release. 
