Industrial Relations & Enterprise Bargaining

A workforce issue rarely arrives neatly separated into industrial, commercial and human considerations. We help leaders understand the interests and obligations at play, examine options and decide how to respond.

We connect the immediate decision to the wider employment relationship: the precedent it may create, the expectations it may reinforce, and the way managers will need to carry it through. This includes examining the applicable instruments, the facts behind competing positions and the effect of different responses on future working arrangements.

Where trust has been damaged, a response needs to address both the issue and what allowed it to arise. We help leaders consider acknowledgement, corrective action and changes to management practice without avoiding accountability or treating better communication as a substitute for a sound decision.

Bargaining preparation starts with the business priorities, workforce interests and the authority to make commitments. We help establish a mandate that distinguishes essential operating requirements from negotiable choices, with the evidence and decision points needed to guide the negotiation.

An enterprise agreement sets the cost, flexibility and operating model of the workforce for its life. We review existing arrangements against the relevant award and actual site practices, examine the better off overall test, and consider how proposed clauses would operate across rosters, staffing and management decisions. A commitment needs to be understood in practice, not only agreed in principle.

We provide bargaining strategy and negotiation support, including preparation for difficult exchanges and assessment of options when bargaining stalls or industrial action is in prospect. Where intractable bargaining or other statutory processes may affect the strategy, we consider their operational and commercial implications with specialist legal advice where required.

A dispute can involve a substantive disagreement and a separate breakdown in the working relationship. We distinguish the question that needs to be resolved from the interests, expectations and conduct that may be keeping it in dispute, so that the response addresses more than the stated position.

We help prepare an engagement and escalation strategy: what evidence is needed, who should be involved, which obligations or procedures apply, and when an issue requires a different decision-maker or specialist legal advice. Early clarification, management preparation and a considered sequence of discussions can help prevent an unresolved concern from becoming a repeated dispute.

Resolution needs a defensible basis and an arrangement that can be carried through. We examine the terms, their precedent and the practical responsibilities that would follow. Agreement at any price is not the objective; a proposed settlement still needs to be assessed against obligations, commercial purpose and the consequences for the wider workforce.

Where a dispute proceeds to the Fair Work Commission, we support the employer's preparation for and participation in the matter, as appropriate within the agreed engagement and with specialist legal advice where required.