The CEO of bionic-ear manufacturer Cochlear says trade unions have been given too much power in Australia, and the workers’ representatives are now holding back national development.

Chris Roberts, managing director and chief executive of Cochlear, will give an address entitled “Unions in Control” today at the HR Nicholls Society annual conference in Melbourne. He says he will speak on a contentious plan to give unions more power to force "intractable" disputes into arbitration, as happened with the Cochlear company in a six-year dispute case.  

Mr Roberts says in the case of his company, collective bargaining became a minefield; "You can certainly find individual cases where a collective agreement in a particular firm helped productivity, and you can find just as many cases - Cochlear is a good example - where a collective agreement didn't help productivity."

The Cochlear case nearly buried the company, Mr Roberts said; "It has been a huge, huge distraction and hugely costly, and it's been a disgrace because it was based on this premise that productivity and collectivism are somehow linked, that collective bargaining would drive productivity, and the literature does not support that.”

Mr Roberts and other industry bodies have said they believe Australia’s union and government interactions should be kept in check to remain globally competitive.