Respect@Work

Applies to workers employed in both state and federal systems, including Queensland Health and other public sector entities.

The QNMU welcomes the Respect@ Work legislation being fully installed in 2023 – this is a vital step in addressing workplace sexual harassment.

The Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation (Respect@Work) legislation is designed to change how employers and managers address and respond to sexual harassment and abuse in their workplaces.

It enshrines requirements for a proactive model whereby businesses must create safe, equitable workplaces and actively work to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment and abuse, instead of the previous model which generally operated reactively, responding only after complaints had been raised.

Under the legislation, businesses are required to take “reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation, as far as possible”, which includes actively stamping out hostile conduct and bias on the basis of sex.

The new rules also lower the threshold for what constitutes sexual harassment from unwelcome conduct of a ‘seriously demeaning’ nature to unwelcoming conduct of a ‘demeaning’ nature, which captures harassment in reference to someone’s sex, which is not necessarily sexual.

Employers have until the end of this year to make changes to their workplaces in order to be compliant with the new rules.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has been given investigative and enforcement powers to monitor and address employer compliance and will be able to seek a court order if they determine a business has failed in their duty to create a safe and equitable workplace.

Secure Jobs, Better Pay Legislation

Applies only to workers employed in the federal system.

The Federal Government’s most significant piece of industrial reform the Secure Jobs, Better Pay legislation has already made a number of changes to worker’s right from 7 December 2022, with the bulk of the new rules rolling out over the next 12 months.

Further amendments to industrial legislation are expected to be put to parliament later this year.

Key changes implemented last year include changes to the Fair work Act objectives, so they now include promoting job security and gender equality ; and in another step forward for gender equity at work, the introduction of new protected attributes in the anti-discrimination provisions of the Fair Work Act – namely breast feeding, gender identity and intersex status.

The Fair Work Commission now also has a handful of new powers. It can now unilaterally correct errors in enterprise agreements and terminate agreements after their nominal expiry date.