NEWSFLASH:

Employment Law Update Seminar 2009

Part 2 – Awards, agreements and more

Rob Stevenson

LLB(Hons)(QUT), LLM(Environmental Resources Law) (QUT)

Accredited Specialist (Workplace Relations)

Principal, Australian Workplace Lawyers

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A. INTRODUCTION

This paper is the second part of a “Newsflash” overview of the changes to federal workplace relations law made by the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). This paper will outline:

1. what modern awards are and how they will operate;

2. who can enter into an enterprise agreement and how;

3. what good faith bargaining will require;

4. when employees can take industrial action;

5. what rights of entry unions will have; and

6. other workplace rights.

Whilst the changes made by the Fair Work Act are significant, they do not constitute a wholesale departure from the Workplace Relations Act. It should be borne in mind that prior to gaining government, the then Labor opposition’s stated intentions were, relevantly, that it would:

1. return collective bargaining to its pre-eminent status as the main method of determining conditions of employment on condition that employees could not be made worse off when compared with the safety net comprised of the National Employment Standards and modern awards;

2. essentially make no changes to the controls on industrial action; and

3. modernise and simplify awards against the background of the new National Employment Standards.

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