How to make sure your business is prepared for the new Fair Work Act.
click here to get a free trailDear Reader,
I’ll bet the new Modern Awards and National Employment Standards have been taking up a fair bit of your time of late.
It’s understandable. They’re two of the biggest changes to Australian IR laws ever – so big that many of the other Fair Work Act amendments seem to be getting forgotten…
But don’t just ignore the other changes the Fair Work Act has made to IR legislation, however minor they may seem by comparison.
Dear Reader,
Yesterday, I heard word of a case in which an employer was fined more than $60,000.
So what did he do?
He breached general protections provisions by dismissing three workers because of their involvement in union activities.
The three employees were dismissed for fighting for better wages and conditions during the bargaining, two of them because they were union members.
Under the Fair Work Act, your employees are protected from discrimination in a number of ways.
These protections are known as general protections, and if they are breached, serious penalties can be imposed.
You cannot breach an employee’s workplace rights!
Workplace rights give your employees the freedom to exercise and enforce their employment entitlements. For example, if an employee has an entitlement to take leave on a particular day, they have the right to enforce that entitlement.
Dear Reader,
Did you make any New Year’s resolutions for 2010? How are you going with them?
Mine were to save more money – something I find very hard to do when there are just so many beautiful clothes out there! – and, surprise surprise, eat healthily and exercise more.
But coming back to work after the Christmas break got me to thinking…
What if you made New Year’s resolutions that benefit your business too?
So modern awards are now in operation. But are you sure that your business is compliant?
If your employees are covered by a modern award, you must ensure that you offer them terms and conditions of employment that at least match, if not better, those outlined in the award.
If you don’t, you could face fines of up to $33,000.
With that in mind, try completing this checklist – it will help to ensure that you are meeting your requirements when it comes to modern awards.
Dear Reader,
I know. It seems like all I’ve been talking about lately in the Bulletin are the Fair Work Act changes – the new Modern Awards, the National Employment Standards, General Protections, the list goes on.
But to be fair, the Fair Work Act is one of the biggest changes to Australian industrial relations legislation in decades, and my mantra is you can never be too prepared!
So I thought that today would be a good time to remind you about one of the least talked about Fair Work Act changes – the changes to your employees’ parental leave entitlements.
Dear Reader,
Well, another year is almost over. And whatever 2009 brought for you and your business, there’s no denying it was a HUGE year for workplace relations.
When the Fair Work Act came in last July, the sheer volume of changes it introduced were enough to make anyone’s head spin. Mine certainly did! And it’s not long now before the rest of the legislation comes in on 1 January 2010…
So before that happens, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect on all the changes that were made throughout 2009…
Ok, so you’ve heard a lot about modern awards and the fact that they come in on 1 January 2010. But can you actually use award flexibility agreements to make the application of awards to your business more flexible?
Take a café that employs a number of casual employees that work only on weekends. How can the café enter into Award Flexibility Agreements to pay a fixed “weekend casual rate”?
With only weeks away before the commencement of modern awards for national system employers on 1 January 2010, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission has issued a new ruling dealing with some important issues.
The ruling declares that:
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