Alan McDonald: Employers and Manufacturers Association Head of Advocacy on ACT's plan to allow employers to withhold pay for workers on partial strikes

Employers are in favour of ACT's plan to allow them to withhold pay for workers on partial strikes. 

Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden wants to reverse a previous Government move which prevented pay being docked if workers continued to do some work during a strike. 

Currently pay can only be withheld during a full strike. 

Employers and Manufacturers Association Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald told Heather du Plessis Allan the current rules aren't working. 

He says they campaigned against the 2018 change out of fear it would lead to more strikes, and it has. 

McDonald says workers have the right to withhold their labour, so employers should have the right to withhold their pay. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the governments announced it's planning to reintroduce pay docking
for partial strikes. Now at the moment, workers can only
have their pay dock for full strikes. It used to
be for partial strikes as well, but then they are
doing government scrapped that in twenty eighteen. Alan McDonald is
from the Employers and Manufacturers Association the EMAA.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Allen morning, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Is it basically what we've created here by not docking
the partial strikes as we're basically incentivized workers to just
do the partial strike so they can keep their full pay.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah. Yeah, we were a bit surprised about the announcement yesterday,
but it was one of the things we campaigned quite
hard against back in two twenty eighteen. I think they
bought it in and the reason for that was that
we expected strike action to increase, and that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Why were you surprised? Did you not ask this government
to reverse it?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It hasn't been on the agenda anywhere. I mean, they've
been doing a number of different things around employment law
and stuff and sort of rebalancing some of it. But yeah,
this one was a bit of a surprise.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Do we now run the risk though, of potentially pushing
people who are going to strike into just going on
a strike rather than a partial strike.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I don't know. Strike strike actions generally tend to be
a last resort kind of thing what they used to be,
But when you're getting paid to go on strike, it's
sort of pull them forward a bit. So you know,
the workers have the right to withhold their labor, but
so do your employers have the right to withhold the
pay because generally the agreement is you turn up for work,
you get paid. If you don't turn up to do

(01:23):
the job you're supposed to do, you don't get paid. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Are people going to get paid for working to rule?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Not sure. It looks like a slightly complicated process to
do something like that. I don't have to go to
the Employment Relations Authority and things like that.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So it's a rule, I mean, because allen working to
rule is just working to the leader of your contract.
Doesn't it literally doing your job? So you should get
you full paid for that?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah you should?

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yes, Okay, brilliant. Hey, thanks very much. I really appreciates
Alan McDonald of the EMA.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
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