How to make sure your business is prepared for the new Fair Work Act.
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So if you don’t know what’s in the modern award applying to your business, now is the time to find out!
For example, if you employ a receptionist or an office worker, they are most likely covered by the Clerks – Private Sector Award.
Dear Reader,
As if modern awards weren’t confusing enough, the phasing in of transitional award provisions is due to begin soon… on 1 July 2010 to be precise!
What are transitional award provisions?
Transitional provisions are included in most modern awards and essentially allow you to “phase-in” increases in wages, loadings and penalties over a period of 5 years.
Transitional provisions in modern awards mean that you do not have to start increasing base rates of pay to match modern award rates until 1 July 2010.
But how does this really work?
In reality, it is very complicated, especially because there will be a minimum wage increase across all awards on 1 July 2010.
Let me try and explain using an example:
Last week, I started to show you some common modern award provisions that may require you to change the way you currently operate.
This week, I’ll show you a few more…
Consultation
If you decide to introduce any changes in your business that might have significant effects on employees, you have to give advance notice of the change to affected employees and discuss how any adverse impact on them can be avoided. It is particularly important to follow this when you are implementing multiple redundancies, because if you don’t it will count against you in any unfair dismissal claim that results from the retrenchments.
Modern awards contain many provisions that might require you to change your current practices.
Because not all awards are the same, you should check the terms of the award that applies to you.
Some common provisions that may require you to change your current practices are outlined below.
The Government is encouraging employers to make enterprise agreements.
But you need to consider that this might not be the best option to tailor award conditions to suit your workplace. You do have other options available to you.
They are:
CONTINUE READING
Dear 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.
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,
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”?
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