He was a casual all along – High Court decides

Many employers breathed a sigh of relief that the complicated Workpac case about a casual has been resolved by the High Court, which found the employee was casual and not entitled to annual and other leave as claimed.

Service Industries Award Flexibilities Welcome

Responding to the IR Minister’s request of late last year, the FWC has introduced certain flexibilities into the Retail award and is about to do the same to the Restaurants award. While the request and the reaction to it arose because of the pandemic, the flexibilities themselves make sense regardless of current circumstances and have been a feature of enterprise agreements for the past 25 years.

Competitors Oblige Agreement Termination

What to do with an agreement with generous conditions when your competitors keep beating you on all your tenders? This problem faced a company that found earlier largesse was coming back to bite as more players entered their patch, leaving them behind.

Don’t push your luck when bargaining

Sometimes it’s just not the right time to be bargaining for a new enterprise agreement, so there’s a temptation to adopt spoiling tactics. But they can backfire. And if that happens, there is a real risk of enforced bargaining and a threat to reputation as well.

Agreement approvals getting more efficient

Reacting to stakeholder concerns and political pressures, the Fair Work Commission has appreciably sped up enterprise agreement approval processes. Almost mirroring recent failed time-limit legislative moves, the FWC is now settling an impressive 80% of approval applications inside three weeks.

Intimidation, or just stating plain facts?

When a services company was faced with a mining operator’s ultimatum to reduce costs or lose the contract, it acted.  It decided that without a reduction in wage rates, penalties, and overtime entitlements (to apply only to new recruits), the contract would be lost.

Enterprise Agreements: Specific Explanations Needed

Once again the FWC has baulked at approving agreements where it was not convinced the employers had taken all reasonable steps to explain the proposed deals to the employees.

Casual changes pass Parliament

For the first time, a casual will be defined in federal legislation. Importantly, the definition focuses on the intention of the employer and the employee at the start of the relationship in identifying the true nature of the employment contract. This development follows the controversial Workpac cases where employees, engaged and paid as casuals, were […]