With the Federal Election coming up in May we wanted to take a look at some of the prospective Workplace Relations changes that are on the cards and offer some insights around the practical challenges they may have on the ground in your business.  To keep these videos shorter we have broken this series up into the various political parties and today we will focus on the Workplace Relations policies that we understand that labor is taking to the election.

If you would like to see the breakdown of the Workplace Relation policies of the other major parties, please visit ondemandhr.com.au where you will be able to find them as soon as they are released.

Labor has indicated that they have 4 key Workplace Relations policies it is looking to take to the May election and today we are going to cover their policy on pay secrecy.

Currently, some employers have included clauses in their employment contracts when prevent employees from disclosing their remuneration to other employees and expose the employees to claims risk should they break these clauses.  These type of clauses are most commonly seen for employees that are eligible for bonus or incentive schemes which are common place in the legal and finance industries.

Labor is seeking to make it illegal for employers to include these clauses arguing that it will bring greater equality of pay for the same position within organisations as well as assist in bridging the gender pay gap.

The problem with this as far as we see it is that what labor is seeking to do does not only apply to the employees base rate of pay, but also to bonus and incentive schemes.  From a business perspective, in an already highly regulated employment market when it comes to minimum rates of pay, should I have the ability to further reward & incentivise employees as I see fit without worrying that an employee will be knocking on my door the next morning arguing that Sally is getting paid X and I am getting paid Y and its unfair!

Further to this, we feel that an employer who is offering something of value to an employee such as increased remuneration or access to a bonus scheme above and beyond the typical arrangements for a position should be able to ask for something in return from the employee.  Typically this will be KPI or metric based such as a sales person achieving certain sales targets, but why not also asking for confidentiality.

Is this a fair deal for the employee?  Do they have a fair choice to accept or decline the offer without undue pressure?  Can one employee in a position be paid more than another based on a whole range of non discriminatory factors?  We would argue that the answer to all of these questions are yes and would be interested to hear your thoughts regardless if you are liberal labor or other, an employer or employee.  We all deserve a voice and the ability to make informed decisions.

We would be interested to hear your thoughts regardless if you are liberal labour or other, an employer or employee.  We all deserve a voice and the ability to make informed decisions.