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

___________________________________________________________________________

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.

Download the full article in docx format here

Download the full article in pdf format here

What do the Rudd Government’s workplace relations changes mean for business?

Rob Stevenson

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

Accredited Specialist (Workplace Relations)

Principal, Australian Workplace Lawyers

___________________________________________________________________________

A. INTRODUCTION

Over the last 15 years in Australia, there has been a movement away from the historically entrenched industrial concepts of centralised wage fixation, conciliation and arbitration and award coverage to a greater emphasis on workplace bargaining. The pace of change accelerated in 2006 when the Howard Government significantly amended the Workplace Relations Act 1996. Despite being watered down before the last election, the “Work Choices” laws represented arguably the most significant change in Australian industrial relations law since federation. As Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd promised before the last election that he would “rip up” Work Choices, but does “Forward with Fairness” reflect this promise or are the proposed changes more “evolutionary” than “revolutionary”?

This paper will outline:

1. key changes to the industrial landscape created by Work Choices;

2. the components of the Forward with Fairness regime including the new National Employment Standards, modern awards, industrial umpire, agreement making and termination laws; and

3. key issues that a business will have to consider in its legal relationship with its employees under the new system.

This paper does not purport to be an exhaustive expose of the new laws. Rather, the intention is to give practitioners an overview of the important changes occurring in our system of industrial relations to assist practitioners in understanding how the workplace relations system might apply to their clients and in identifying issues for clients to address.

Download the full document here.

Discrimination Commission and Tribunal Procedure Information Pack

INTRODUCTION

Please note that the information contained in this pack is of a general nature only and it is not intended to replace legal advice about your specific claim.

The Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland (“Commission”) and Anti-Discrimination Tribunal Queensland (“Tribunal”) have been established to handle complaints under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld) (“Act”). Similar provisions exist under federal legislation and are dealt with by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and federal courts. This pack contains practical information about procedure in the Commission and Tribunal. You should refer to information sheets available directly from the Commission about the law of discrimination. These are available on the Commission’s website www.adcq.qld.gov.au.

It is important at the outset to note that there is no general law against all discrimination. It is necessary for any complaint to be brought within the scope of the Act. Please refer to the Commission’s guide about what may comprise discrimination. In brief, the Act contains prohibitions on specific forms of direct and indirect discrimination (such as age, sex, religious belief or activity) in specific areas (such as work and the provision of accommodation). In addition, there is a general prohibition on sexual harassment and vilification. The guide produced by the Commission provides more detail about these matters. In this information pack, the word “discrimination” is used to refer to all forms of conduct prohibited by the Act.

INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION

Pre and post WorkChoices

Rob Stevenson

Partner, Nathan Lawyers

INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE RESOLUTION pre and post WorkChoices1

By Rob Stevenson

Partner, Nathan Lawyers²

1. INTRODUCTION

A system of industrial dispute resolution has evolved over the last 100 years in which the state and federal industrial commissions have played a pre-eminent (almost parental) role. The commissions have wide ranging powers to prevent and settle industrial disputes by compulsory conciliation and arbitration and a significant body of law has developed in this area.

Since the election of the federal coalition government in 1996, there have been attempts to give greater emphasis to the resolution of disputes at the workplace level without the involvement of the industrial commissions. These efforts have occurred during an extended period of industrial peace and economic prosperity.³

The advent of the Workplace Relations Amendment (WorkChoices) Act 2005 (Cth) effectively sweeps away a body of law and practice which has developed over the last 100 years and seeks to remove the commissions from their prominent involvement in workplace dispute resolution whether on an industrial or individual basis.

This paper considers the pre and post WorkChoices systems and the implications that WorkChoices has for dispute resolution in Australia as well as posing some practical problems for resolution.⁴