New Industrial Relations Environment

An industrial dispute can cripple or even destroy a business. Even if resolved, a poorly handled dispute can create lingering problems between management and staff. Adverse publicity from such a dispute can create a public relations nightmare for organisations.

Employers need a comprehensive, practical and flexible industrial dispute management policy and contingency strategy. Above and beyond the human resources and public relations issues, the strategy needs to include security, crisis management, quality management and business continuity.

CPA was founded in 1997 during the Patrick waterfront dispute and in the subsequent 25 years, clients have relied on our expertise to plan and implement these strategies.

In the current IR environment, this has never been more necessary, and we are consequently fielding many calls from concerned clients.

A recent example threatened shipping across the Australian seaboard, with the potential to impact the entire economy. Our client was subject to ongoing industrial action with its workforce. Contingency planning was required to protect staff and assets, flexible and professional security management and evidence collation of unlawful activity.

Trained security specialists including video capability were deployed at ports across the country. No other company could have mobilised to this extent and within this timeframe.

The potential crisis was averted without major incident and within days. Job done.

Industrial Relations Dispute Services

Corporate Protection can assist your organisation in the event of an industrial dispute. Our industrial relations dispute services include:

• preventative assessment and planning;
• identifying and evaluating your organisation’s critical operations and key assets including your brand
• Picket line and safe driving protocols
• staff safety briefings and training
• identifying potential threats and the resulting risks.
• contingency planning – we will audit your existing industrial dispute management plan and work side by side with your legal team and relevant staff to develop robust crisis management and business continuity procedures;
• vulnerability and security audit – we will conduct vulnerability and security audits on operations, management, staff and external operational partners including suppliers, vendors, and subcontractors;
• CCTV temporary and fixed solutions to monitor behavior
• Highly experienced security professionals, with experience in over 20 high profile industrial protesters, there is no one more experienced in this field in Australia.
• Low impact security presence to minimise interaction with any hostile group.
• post incident management – we follow up with an extensive post-incident debriefing. This includes a review of incident management planning and procedures.

Our experienced consultants can help you identify risks across your entire organisation. This can greatly reduce your exposure to such risks.