35 ‘sensible, modest and targeted improvements’ needed in employment standards, AIG says

A “fair and balanced” approach is needed to improve the nation’s employment standards, the Australian Industry Group has argued before Parliament.

The House standing committee on employment, workplace relations, skills and training heard from Australian Industry Group (AIG) head of national workplace relations policy Brent Ferguson on Tuesday, 5 May, at which he discussed what the group sees as a need for minor yet crucial changes to the National Employment Standards (NES), specifically regarding leave and payment provisions.

“Our view, and one of the central views, is that the committee should be particularly mindful in conducting this review, of the need for stability in our workplace relations laws, and particularly in the safety net. Stability is a crucial factor in driving compliance with our workplace laws.”

“That consideration is particularly important when we take into account the waves of changes to our workplace relations laws that employers have had to grapple with over recent years. In saying that, we don’t suggest that this committee shouldn’t try to identify sensible improvements in the NES, and indeed, we’ve identified a raft of those, but the point is, we’ve ultimately come to the view that you don’t need to recommend any radical expansion or contraction of the NES entitlements.”

Ferguson detailed the overall themes of AIG’s recommendations, such as the so-called unworkable notion of the requirement to provide a full rate of pay in certain contexts where this “can’t be readily or accurately identified”.

Regarding the current treatment of annual leave in awards, which was called inconsistent, unclear, and incomplete, it was recommended that the NES consider comprehensive regulation. In a similar vein, he explained the need to address the “complex patchwork of inconsistent long service leave entitlements.”

Ferguson said: “What we need is a balanced and fair approach to developing a nationally consistent scheme, not just a leveling up to the most generous or erroneous element. And we’ve suggested an alternative approach as a modest first step towards that of letting parties deal with long-service leave through enterprise bargaining or permitting the cashing out of long-service leave.”

An additional point was made concerning “impractical prohibition” on terminating an employee until all payment-in-lieu as entitled under the NES is completed. The current provisions, he said, made sense when employees were paid in cash on their last day, but less so when dealing with standard practices in which termination payments are made via EFT.

The AIG also proposed changes to the currently complex rules to parental leave around public holidays and made “perhaps our most novel proposition: we’ve suggested that the NES should include a mechanism enabling the use of annualised wage or annualised salaries”.

Ferguson highlighted this is “an arrangement for smoothing people’s pay that is desired by many employees and is deeply beneficial to workers, but which is notoriously risky now from an employer’s perspective in light of certain Federal Court cases involving the Fair Work Ombudsman, Woolworths and Coles”.

No further hearings have yet been announced, but the inquiry remains ongoing as of 5 May.

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