AWU pushes Labor government for universal portable long service leave

The powerful Australian Workers Union has endorsed a radical new policy that would affect every single Australian worker, guaranteeing them two months of long-service leave regardless of whether or not they have served 10 years with an employer.

The proposal, called “portable” long service leave, would reform the current system that allocates the paid break entitlement based on an employee’s period of service to a particular company.

In a resolution from its national conference in Perth this week, the AWU said the entitlement needed to be updated to capture changes in work over the past few years.

“While secure, long-term employment was once the norm for most, millions are now in insecure work,” the resolution states.

“22 per cent of Australian workers are in casual roles. Many AWU industries are highly casualised … for AWU members and millions of others in insecure work, the prospect of qualifying for statutory LSL is remote at best.

“Less than a quarter of all workers have been with their employer for over 10 years and 11 per cent don’t expect to remain in their current role for another year.”

Under the scheme, companies would pay into a worker’s account or balance, similar to superannuation contributions, which would be reinvested and build over time and then pay out to cover the two-month break when an employee hits the 10-year mark.

The proposal would be “universal”, meaning it would cover all workers across every sector and capture casual, part-time and full-time employees.

The AWU told NewsWire an additional levy on businesses would pay for the leave.

An employee would keep the contributions paid to them by a company, even if they leave the business for a different employer.

The left-wing McKell Institute has backed the reform for years and the AWU voted on Wednesday to push Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Senator Murray Watt to legislate the change in a second-term Labor government.

“Now is the time, with a federal Labor government prepared to roll out sensible, fair minded industrial relations reform, to see a portable Long Service Leave scheme cemented into our workplace rights,” AWU national secretary Paul Farrow said.

“With Same Job Same Pay laws taken care of in the Albanese government’s first term, what better way to begin a second term than with an innovative reform like this.”

Senator Watt has been contacted for comment.

The reform, if legislated, would add to a sweep of labour-friendly changes to industrial relations ushered in by Mr Albanese since gaining power in 2022, including Same Job Same Pay, which attempts to equalise wages between permanent and labour-hire workers, and multi-employer bargaining.

Ai Group CEO Innes Willox blasted the proposal as another “blatant union grab that assumes employers have endless capacity to should further costs”.

“Adopting universal portable long service leave would be a deeply flawed step that would inevitably have significant adverse impacts on employers, including higher costs and new administrative burdens,” he told NewsWire on Thursday.

“This has been demonstrated through the past operation of portable leave schemes applying in some discrete sectors in some jurisdictions.

“Quite simply, employers have made it clear they would be seriously hesitant to engage a person who has accumulated weeks of long service elsewhere if they were then expected to lose the services of that employee for many weeks.

“This proposal risks making labour mobility harder rather than easier.”

Mr Innox added the central purpose of LSL, which was first granted to some Victorian and South Australian public servants in the 1860s, was to reward employee loyalty to a single enterprise.

“The whole purpose of this unique type of leave, with entitlements varying from state to state, is to afford a break to someone who has been long employed with an individual company,” he said.