The minister responsible for employment and industrial relations, Tony Burke, has expressed strong interest in a proposal for multi-employer bargaining, saying he wants to see the idea "fleshed out".
The idea is a key part of the agenda the trade union movement is taking to the federal government's jobs summit next week.
It would see workplace laws amended so workers and their union representatives could strike deals on pay and conditions with multiple employers at once.
Mr Burke stressed that the government was not "ruling things in or out" in the lead-up to the summit, including some ideas from "left field".
A proposal from the National Farmers Federation where workers could be part-paid in food remained "on the table", he said.
But Mr Burke went further on multi-employer bargaining.
"I do have to say, I am very interested in what the ACTU [Australian Council of Trade Unions] have put forward," he told 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson.
"We need to be able to get bargaining moving, and there are a few examples in different workforces where that concept of multi-employer bargaining [is used] – I'm really interested in seeing how we can flesh this out."
Mr Burke said there were "lots of employers that have wanted to engage in multi-employer bargaining" — he cited examples of small businesses that might want to reach an enterprise agreement with their workers, but lacked the firepower in human resources unless they worked together.
In other cases, he said, small businesses that negotiated individual enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) were putting themselves at risk of being undercut on wages by new players.
"Cleaners are a simple example," he said.
"The employer does the right thing and gives a pay rise – you can find very quickly that someone else just comes, undercuts them, and it's all gone."
Mr Burke suggested a hypothetical change to bargaining rules would not necessarily apply across the whole economy.
The question of which industries would be one for the government to decide in the future.
"If you were to do something like this – and we haven't made a decision – but if you were, you'd then work through which workforces you'd apply it to."
The small business council, COSBOA, has expressed openness to the ACTU proposal.
While major employer groups like the Business Council of Australia do want reforms to the enterprise bargaining system in general, their reaction to the multi-employer proposal has been frosty.
The Australian Financial Review reported BCA chief Jennifer Westacott said her organisation did not "support multi-employer bargaining as a solution to the decline of enterprise bargaining or slow wages growth."
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has labelled the idea a throwback to a past world of industrial relations that could not "seriously be entertained."
Watch the interview on 7.30 tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview.
