The Australian Government’s wage subsidy plan will help more than 6 million people who have seen their income fall because of the Coronavirus pandemic.The JobKeeper scheme gives affected businesses $1500 per fortnight, per employee to help pay the wages of an estimated 6.7 million Australians for six months. Employers need to apply for the wage […]
Due to ongoing requirements put in place by governments to contain the spread of the Coronavirus, and the resulting significant loss in trade, we have advised that a large proportion of the workforce is to be progressively stood down from work over the coming days/weeks in response to this situation. This is a very stressful […]
24th March 2020 As millions of Australians find themselves out of work in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, employers and trade unions are finding themselves in a most unexpected and unpleasant situation. This predicament may well be the beginnings of a new and more consultative approach to industrial relations. Enterprise bargaining specialist, Ross […]
The workplace is in turmoil as it responds to the ramifications of Coronavirus. In this environment it is more important than ever to PLAN. When I say plan, I mean not to prepare for what you want to happen, but what is happening.
The tricky question of whether employees are working or not when they perform some work-related tasks during their breaks has had an airing in the Fair Work Commission. And it’s not always clear cut if the employer has a liability to pay.
The employee had argued that since the agreement had expired two and half years previously, the cancellation should operate from the day after the agreement expired. This would have presented the employer with a serious problem, because the award had ‘caught up’ with the agreement in some areas, so there would be a great deal of effort needed to ensure the 109,000 employees had been paid properly.
The Fair Work Commission has refused to play nurse to a group of employees calling in sick, saying taking multiple sick leave absences constitutes covert industrial action. And since there was already protected industrial action taking place, the coordinated ‘sick leave’ was unprotected action, so had to cease. The company and the employees were involved […]
Many employers think their obligation to explain the effect of a proposed agreement is met when they set out the differences between a proposed agreement and the award(s) that would otherwise apply. But that’s not necessarily the whole story. Failing to explain the difference between an expired agreement and a new one as well, can […]