HIRE23 STAND #72

BATTERIES, CHARGERS & ACCESSORIES FOR ANY EQUIPMENT

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Lester Electrical Industrial Chargers

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1. The employee is a parent, or has responsibility for the care, or a child who is of school age or younger;

2. The employee is a carer (within the meaning of the Carer Recognition Act 2010);

3. The employee has a disability;

4. The employee is 55 or older;

5. The employee is experiencing violence from a member of the employee’s family; or

6. The employee provides care or support to a member of the employee’s immediate family, or a member of the employee’s household, who requires care or support because the member is experiencing violence from the member’s family.

Currently, members are only required to consider the employee’s request and provide a response within 21 days. If the member chooses to reject the request, they must do so on reasonable business grounds (a non-exhaustive list of which exists in the Fair Work Act).

From 6 June 2023, members who receive a flexible working arrangement request and have decided to refuse the request, must have taken the following steps prior to doing so:

• discuss the request with the employee;

• genuinely try to reach agreement about the flexible work arrangement request;

• detail the reasonable business grounds relied upon; and

• write to the employee within 21 days:

- refusing the request;

- detailing changes that the employer could accommodate (if any); and - providing information on a right for the employee to refer the matter to the FWC to deal with the dispute.

These changes make refusing a flexible work arrangement request more onerous on members and provides the employee with an ability to seek assistance from the Fair Work Commission, which may result in a FWC member directing a member to provide a flexible work arrangement to an employee.

The changes also make the flexible work arrangement request sections of the Fair Work Act civil remedy provisions. This means that if a member fails to comply with the above obligations they can be subject to penalties.

Annual Leave during a shutdown period

On 1 May 2023, the Fair Work Commission introduced, into 78 modern awards, a model clause that will have the effect of prohibiting an employer from requiring an employee to take unpaid annual leave during a shutdown period. Members must now be more vigilant than ever that if they have a shutdown period, all employees have sufficient annual leave to cover that period.

To protect themselves, members should review any annual leave request in light of the expected shutdown period and in circumstances that the employee will not have sufficient leave to cover the either (a) reject the annual leave request or (b) require the employee to sign a written agreement confirming that they will take unpaid leave over the shutdown period.

If an employee does not have sufficient leave to cover the shutdown period, and refuses to sign an agreement to take unpaid leave, the member must (a) provide work to the employee over that period, or (b) provide them with additional paid leave (which is not to be counted as leave in advance).

This article was prepared by MST Lawyers, who operate the HRNet service for all HRIA and EWPA members. MST Lawyers is a full-service law firm with dedicated teams specialising in the following areas of law:

• Workplace relations

• Wills and estates

• Property and conveyancing

• Litigation and dispute resolution

• Corporate

• Franchising

• Family HRIA members are encouraged to contact MST Lawyers through the free HRNet hotline support service on 1800 474 247 or workplace@ mst.com.au if they have any HR or employment law related queries. You can find out more about MST Lawyers on their website at https://www.mst.com.au/.