Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said that Mr Albanese had not announced the policy during the campaign.
“The TWU’s call for the re-establishment of a body like the failed RSRT needs to be rejected by the new Federal Government,” he said.
“This was not a policy that Labor announced as a priority ahead of the election.”
The TWU has referred to the Labor party’s policy platform and recommendations last year by a Labor-dominated Senate committee, chaired by Senator Sterle, as evidence that a Labor government backs a safe rates tribunal.
President of the owner-drivers’ National Road Freighters Association, Rod Hannifey, argued that “many truck drivers and operators voted for the Labor Government to ensure we had the mandate to make real change in trucking so that it can be a safe and viable industry for years to come”.
“The consultation process on industry reform needs to start today.”
In his letter to Mr Burke, TWU national secretary Michael Kaine said “we write to express the haste with which a tribunal to set enforceable minimum standards for truck drivers and operators must be installed”,
“Significant increases in fuel costs pose existential threats to transport businesses and owner drivers, many of whom operate on razor-thin margins.” he said.
The union says drivers are more likely to overload, speed, drive while fatigued and cut back on maintenance when their costs destroy their margins.
In this year alone it said 83 people have been killed in truck-involved crashes, including 24 truck drivers, according to incidents published in the media.
In the letter to Senator Sterle – co-signed with employer-group the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation and the NRFA – the union called on Labor to reconvene the Senate committee’s working group to lead industry in establishing the body “without delay”.
The group, headed by Senator Sterle, would then work with the government to draft a timetable for implementing the Senate committee recommendations.
“Unless the incoming Albanese Government takes swift action to address the contracting pressures crushing road transport as laid out in black in white in the Senate report, we risk the potential collapse of Australia’s national supply chains.,” the letter said.
ARTIO secretary Peter Anderson said that his group wanted to make sure “commitments to ensure cost recovery in trucking supply chains is at the top of this Government’s to-do list”.
Mr Burke’s office said they did not have comment at this stage.
Mr Willox said that “more needs to be done, but giving a tribunal the power to set rates of pay for contract drivers will do nothing to improve road safety”.
“The only order that the RSRT made setting mandatory pay rates was threatening to put thousands of owner drivers out of business at the time when Parliament decided to repeal the legislation which established the tribunal.”
