Labor’s Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke is an old Labor politician of bulldozer proportions. He loves to publicly represent workers, whatever the cost. The Australian has totalled the bottom line hit for his latest IR bill and it works out as a $9 billion slug to employers over a decade.

Not surprisingly, bosses are on the warpath. They will oppose what they think are excessive interventionist workplace policies. But that’s what Burke does — he’s old Labor and the unions would have to love him, while employers ‘hate’ him.

So, what are the $9 billion worth of workplace changes that have got bosses hopping mad?

Writing in The Australian, Geoff Chambers says the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has costed the Closing Loopholes bill put to Parliament on Monday at $510 million a year. This covers 66,466 labour-hire workers, effectively giving them many of the entitlements of ordinary employees.

That adds up to around $5 billion over a decade. Then throw in the changes to gig workers who operate on bikes and in cars for the likes of Uber or Door Dash. This is calculated to be $4 billion. This adds up to be the $9 billion number that employer groups are complaining about. And some groups think that is a big underestimation!

Chambers reports that the CEO of the Minerals Council of Australia, Tania Constable, thinks Burke’s commitment to his “same job, same pay” laws will have much wider cost implications. “As the legislation now makes abundantly clear, the economic impact fails to take into account the hundreds of thousands if not millions of service contractors and workers in related entity businesses that will be captured by this legislation,” Constable said.

Anyone who has contractors in their business must be concerned that a defined relationship that currently exists, one day could be seen as an employer/employee relationship. The explosion of contractors in recent decades has been both a benefit for employers and contractors, with the latter often wanting flexibility, bigger cash payments rather than employee entitlements and possibly an opportunity to gradually build a business.

But now Burkey could be giving them employee-like benefits as they enjoy the pluses of being a contractor.

“Business leaders said they were particularly concerned about impacts on owner-driver truckies, apprentices and trainees attached to group training organisations and registered training organisations, adverse impacts on supply chains and employers being forced to litigate their way out of “same job, same pay” rules,” Chambers revealed.

In simple terms, if these law changes give an owner-driver of a trucking business/contractor, many of the entitlements of an employee, it’s a bonus for the contractor and an escalation in costs for the employer.

And while it could make a contractor happy in the short run, it could make employees more attractive, which would also make unions happy! It looks like Bulldozer Burkey has a cunning plan that Edward Black Adder would be proud of!

Unsurprisingly, a big employer pushback advertising campaign is on the way.