Many small to medium employers are fairly content to have their employee’s conditions covered by an industry Award and pay the required market rate applicable to their positions provided they meet the Award wage rate. However, this could soon become more complex in some industries.
The Government has made a range of changes to the Fair Work Act (2009) including adding two new types of Enterprise Agreements which can cover many employers.
This contradicts the purpose of ‘enterprise’ agreements and effectively makes them another type of Award which have uniform conditions across multiple employers. Given Enterprise Agreements must at least largely reflect the conditions in their underlying Awards its hard to understand the necessity of these new options other than to force employers to lift wages. This may well be the only substantive difference.
Employers can voluntarily become involved in these ‘Agreements’ or they can be ‘roped’ into them.
Firstly, unions can apply to the Commission to extend the coverage of an existing Agreement to include your business without you agreeing to it. There are a number of conditions attached to this process.
Secondly, employers may become part of the Supported Bargaining stream which is designed to target industries, sectors or occupations with relatively low wages following a Declaration being issued by the Minister. If the employer is not caught at the initial stage (during negotiations) they may also be roped into the Agreement (once approved by the Fair Work Commission) at a later date.
Both these systems are designed to rope in employers with almost no ability to avoid them.
There are very limited actions an employer can take to avoid this end result. Hunter Employee Relations recently assisted a small employer to establish their own enterprise agreement for the next 4 years to block out being roped into an expected broader industry Agreement.
These changes are effective from 6 June 2023
If you believe your industry/sector could be the target of one of these multi-employer initiatives and wish to consider your own Enterprise Agreement with your employees, please give me a call to discuss your options.
Kind Regards
Michael Schmidt
M 0438 129 728
www.hunteremployeerelations.com.au
Industrial Relations - Employment Law - Workplace Performance
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |