‘Flagrantly misleading’: Ai Group claps back against WFH ‘dummy spit’ claim

The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) clashes with unions over a working-from-home trade-off included in the continued discussions around the Clerks Award – with unions calling it a “massive dummy spit”.

Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox has quickly hit back at union claims that the business group’s latest initiated proceedings with the Fair Work Commission (FWC) are a “massive dummy spit” after their “anti-worker” agenda was “rejected at the recent federal election” landslide.

Willox claimed the Australian Services Union (ASU) characterisation of Ai Group’s proceedings “paint a flagrantly misleading picture” of their true intentions pertaining to the Clerks Award.

As previously reported by HR Leader, the FWC is currently undergoing a development into integrating a working-from-home term into the Clerks Award. Now, Ai Group has initiated proceedings on the motion to develop a term that “facilitates employers and employees making workable arrangements for working at home and removes any existing award impediments to such arrangements”.

According to ASU national secretary Emeline Gaske, the proceeding aims to “gut existing protections for workers based on where they do their job”. The union claims the proposal seeks to strip workers of their overtime pay, penalty rates, meal breaks in exchange for working from home.

“Even discussing the idea of employers refusing to pay overtime, remove penalty rates, eliminate breaks, and roster staff for as little as 30 minutes a day, all because someone works from home, is an outrage,” said Gaske.

“To try and axe basic workplace rights just because people are working from home is completely out of step with modern workplaces and community attitudes. This is a ‘rights and cash grab’, plain and simple. This is big business coming into people’s homes and taking their hard-earned pay and right to reasonable hours [of] work.

“After Peter Dutton’s spectacular misstep on work from home in the election, you would think big business would have learned. Instead, they are trying to sneak in through your back door to do what the Liberals couldn’t. Stripping away your rights, starting with those who work from home.

“This isn’t about asking for new rights. It’s about stopping the biggest employers in the country from ripping away the rights people already rely on to balance work and life.”

Speaking on the proceedings, Willox refrained from making direct comments on the proposed content of the term development; however, he reiterated the illegitimacy of the ASU’s allegations.

“It would be highly inappropriate for any party to comment on or otherwise disclose the content of discussions or developments that have occurred in the context of those proceedings. To do so would be a clear and deliberate breach of faith,” said Willox.

“The union’s alleged comments paint a flagrantly misleading picture of the Australian Industry Group’s intentions.

“… The reality is that, in many respects, the award is completely out of step with the realities of both current working practices and the desired level of flexibility that many employees want in order to help them balance their work and personal commitments.

“It was written at a time that assumed that employees were, by and large, still working from their employer’s office or premises and has failed to evolve to reflect the seismic shift in employee working practices and preferences that have evolved since the pandemic.”

Willox – who isn’t one to mince words during IR battles – reflected on the union’s assertions about Ai Group’s proposals to the commission, describing them as “ridiculous”.

“The union’s ridiculous attempt to demonise industry efforts to assist the commission to develop a term that it has indicated should potentially be inserted into awards, and to characterise them as a ‘dummy spit’, is frankly bizarre and predictably unproductive,” said Willox.

“… Sadly, some in the union movement seem determined to cling to the notoriously complex web of outdated workplace laws that work against the interests of workers, instead of constructively and cooperatively exploring how regulation of working arrangements can be genuinely modernised in a way that is both fair and flexible for all parties.”

In the original statement from the ASU, Gaske feared that Ai Group’s alleged push for the removal of various workers’ rights over WFH is merely the tip of the iceberg.

“This isn’t the thin end of the wedge – it’s the thick end of it. If the AIG successfully rips away workers’ rights in the Clerks Award just because you work from home, what can’t they come after?

“Now is the time to lock in national workplace protections and guarantee the right to work from home for all Australians that can do so,” said Gaske.

“We’ve seen this playbook before, cut wages and conditions bit by bit until there’s nothing left. That’s what AIG is trying to do here. And the ASU will fight tooth and nail to stop it.”