I thought I’d better put out a blog on the difficult topic of the Coronavirus given the amount of public panic and the impact this panic will have on Australian workplaces. Let’s get one thing straight: employers do have a responsibility to make their workplaces healthy and safe. That doesn’t mean that employers have to become overnight medical experts but…

Back in 1991, the notion of compulsory, employer-funded superannuation came as a shock to many. Now we are in 2020, and for a lot of people it’s still a shock. What shocks me is how many politicians and journalists seem to be unaware of the fact that superannuation is very largely funded by employers. Regular clients of Workplace Advisory Group…

One of the criticisms levelled at the former Workplace Relations Minister Craig Laundy (who has now left politics) is that he did not do enough to prevent the merger of the CFMEU and the MUA (now known as the CFMMEU). This was a bit tough on Craig because the law did not permit any real grounds to stop the merger…

The Morrison Government has started making some noises about what it intends to do in reforming the laws around industrial relations. Those noises are made with considerable political caution. So far it’s all been about industry/employer groups being the engine room for suggestions of change. The political advantage in getting industry to suggest change rather than the government is that…

A couple of weeks ago the Federal Government surprised everybody including itself by winning the election. The ink is hardly dry on the official verdict (which will be a two or a three seat absolute majority in the House of Reps) and we are seeing an Industrial Relations Agenda playing out before our eyes. That’s right folks. It’s Australia and…

It’s beyond argument that the two major parties in the 2019 Federal Election have starkly contrasting policies on a number of fundamental points: tax, wage levels, energy, climate change, etc. What has been frustrating to the author of this blog is my relative inability to find out the detail of the Industrial Relations policies of both parties. Having said that,…

And you thought it was just an Australian issue. Wrong! The Supreme Court of California (yes, you read correctly, California) handed down a decision at the end of 2018 in a case involving the trucking firm Dynamex Operations West. Dynamex was using a business model that is popular in Australia where its drivers supplied their own vehicles (and fuelled and…

Next month it will be thirteen years since the Howard Government introduced WorkChoices. It was then the most radical change in employment laws in Australia for close on a century. It amounted to a full throttle deregulation of the labour market. The union movement hated it and ultimately WorkChoices played a major role in the defeat of the Howard Government…

The Productivity Commission has produced a report that could turn Superannuation on its head.

I had been waiting anxiously to advise all Workplace Advisory Group clients and readers of this blog about the industrial relations policy that a Shorten Labor Government would implement when it took office. I’d hoped the ALP National Conference would give me some meaty content upon which to blog. I got that wrong! Bill Shorten has announced the IR policy…

When this writer first came into Industrial Relations the notion of “enterprise bargaining” did not exist. Wages were determined by the Award system. Wage negotiations were conducted by trade unions talking to major employers and industry associations, usually in that order! Unions would attempt to secure their desired deal by pressuring a small number of major companies and then moving…

If you are an employer who has been employing people under Australian laws for many years you will definitely remember the days when employees were paid Leave Loading on termination in fairly limited circumstances. So, fast forward to September 2018 and abandon those memories! S. 90(2) of the Fair Work Act 2009 seemed to sneak up on employers without anyone…

Over the last ten to fifteen years an idea grew up. The idea was that as long as you paid someone the 25% casual loading and you kept telling them they were casual, then they could remain a casual employee forever. Wrong!

No one can have failed to notice that the Federal Government (under new Prime Minister Scott Morrison) has targeted the CFMEU. Some would say this is old news.