Election 2013: Industrial Relations and Small Business at the Elections
Small business in Australia has embarked on a campaign to make sure their voice is heard in the development of industrial relations policy in the future. There are over 2 million small businesses in Australia that together employ more than 7 million Australians or more than 60% of the workforce.
Small business feels that current industrial relations laws do not meet their needs and they want both sides of politics to know it. The relationships between small business owners and their employees is very different from those in big business and industrial relations policies need to reflect this.They say ideology and big business have dominated workplace relations in the past and see Mr Abbott’s statement that that a coalition government would look at practicality rather than ideology in its workplace relations policies as a positive sign.