Business and employer groups want to shred workers’ rights. Again.

An industrial relations ‘blueprint’ paper from the HR Nicholls Society – a think tank closely aligned with the Liberal Party – outlines a radical employers’ agenda designed to tear up protections for workers and deliver big business large scale wage cuts.

The paper calls for the scrapping of awards, the abolition of unfair dismissal rights for workers in businesses with up to 50 employees and preventing any worker earning over $125,000 from being covered by a collective agreement.

If adopted, the policy wish list would result in more than 3.3 million Australians being kicked off awards and collective agreements and, in many cases, pushed onto a single lower minimum wage resulting in huge wage reductions.

The agenda has support among business leaders.

Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association Chief Executive Steve Knott told the HR Nicholls Society that the Howard-era WorkChoices agenda “did not go far enough”.

“The awards system must be abolished,” he said in his address.

“Employers should have the right to make decisions about who to employ or not to employ and who to keep in their business and who not.”

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said the business lobby was looking for the green light to shred workers’ rights.

“Already the Coalition has promised to abolish the right to disconnect, multi-employer bargaining, rights for casual workers and higher wages for labour hire employees.