Disrupting Single-Enterprise Bargaining: Reviewing Recent Australian Experiments

In many countries, including Australia, there has been increasing awareness, and growing concern, about the problems facing single-enterprise bargaining in a world of fissured work. Starting in 2022, the Australian federal Labor Government introduced a series of bold statutory reforms designed to address shrinking agreement coverage, expand bargaining access and uphold the integrity of bargained outcomes. This article outlines the nature and scope of these legislative amendments and considers the extent to which they depart from a ‘Wagnerstyle’ bargaining model. Although these recent experiments are a product of Australia’s own complicated industrial history and context, our analysis provides instructive insights into the complexities and challenges of attempting multi-enterprise regulation within a system founded on single-enterprise bargaining