Media Release
28 January 2009
Fair Work Bill will escalate construction costs and cut jobs
Statement by Wilhelm Harnisch, Chief Executive Officer
The Fair Work Bill currently before Parliament could make construction and infrastructure projects
more expensive and also cost jobs in the building and construction industry.
Mr Wilhelm Harnisch, CEO of Master Builders Australia, in his appearance today before the Senate
Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee, which is holding a public inquiry into
the Bill, warned that certain clauses in the Bill had the potential to increase the level of industrial
disputation and make it harder to reach agreements.
“At a time of a global financial crisis, the last thing that industry needs are new rules that add to
uncertainty and raise costs.”
Mr Harnisch stressed that the Bill had many good features that Master Builders supported, but that
some of its provisions were too favourable to union interests and could lead to a revival of
unwarranted union power.
“Agreement making tends to be faster and less contentious when there is minimal third party
involvement,” he said. “This point is especially important in the construction industry, which has an
unusually turbulent history in which militancy, for the sake of it, has often been worn as a badge of
honour. It would be a tragedy if anything in the Bill led us back to the bad old days of industrial
lawlessness.”
Of particular concern to Master Builders are the provisions of the Bill which have the potential to
provoke union demarcation disputes.
“What many people forget”, said Mr Harnisch, “is that in the bad old days many of the costly disputes
in the building and construction industry were not between the workers and employers at all, but
between rival unions. This had a disastrous effect on productivity and ultimately cost building
workers’ jobs.”
Another major area of concern is with greenfields agreements.
Mr Harnisch cited the case of one
company which recently found that making a greenfields agreement with one union rather than its
rival saved $80 million on one project and $15 million on another.
“Under the new rules, these sorts of cost savings would be far more difficult, and perhaps impossible,
to achieve,” he said. “Since major infrastructure projects are often financed by governments, whose
budgets are already under pressure from falling revenue and increasing demands arising from the
global financial crisis, this is an issue that Parliament should take very seriously.”
Master Builders submission to the inquiry makes 37 recommendations for amending the Fair Work
Bill, relating to such issues as increased union rights to enter worksites, to inspect of books and
documents, to recruit members, and to act for workers who are not members of the union. It also
stresses the need to exclude independent contractors from the Bill, as promised in the Labor Party’s
pre-election industrial policy.
“Industrial law should not regulate independent contractors,” he said.
Mr Harnisch stressed that the aim of Master Builders proposals for change to the Bill was not to harm
the legitimate interests of unions, but to ensure balance and fairness to all, with a view to minimising
the turbulence already threatened by the climate of increasing economic uncertainty.
“We completely agree with the Prime Minister’s insistence that Australia needs sustained
improvements in productivity, and also with the Deputy Prime Minister’s recent statements that a
national priority must be to preserve jobs,” he said. “But parts of the proposed Bill are totally at odds
with these paramount objectives.”
Contact:
Wilhelm Harnisch, CEO: 0402 039 039
Richard Calver, National Director Industrial Relations: 0422 866 766
NEWS 
