The 10 points of the National Employment Standard, Modern Awards, Enterprise Agreements and Record Keeping presented clearly and in Plain-English!

1. Australia's Fair Work Laws
ADP Insider
A Plain-English Introduction to Australia's Fair
Work Laws
March 11, 2015 - by David Bates
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of
hosting the first in a series of ten webinars
explaining Australia’s Fair Work laws. This initial
webinar was the ‘scene-setter’, and provided a
comprehensive overview of the current Fair Work
system.
In case you missed it, here’s a summary of the key
points we covered:
1. National Employment Standards (NES)
The NES form the foundation of the Fair Work
system, and consist of ten minimum terms and
conditions of employment that employers need to
provide to all eligible employees.
The ten NES cover:
• The maximum 38 hour working week
• Annual Leave
• Personal/Carer’s Leave and Compassionate
Leave
• Community Service Leave
• Long Service Leave
• Flexible Working Requests (not to be
confused with Individual Flexibikity
Arrangements or ‘IFAs’ for short!)
• Fair Work Information Statements
• Unpaid Parental Leave
• Notice of Termination and Redundancy Pay,
and
• Public Holidays
We’ll be looking at these ten NES in much greater
detail in the next two webinars in the series.
2. Modern Awards
There are currently 122 Modern Awards which
impose additional terms and conditions of
employment in a wide range of industries and
occupations.
The majority of employees are covered by a
Modern Award, and employers are held legally
responsible for ensuring employees know about
their Award. Employers must also correctly assign
each employee to one of the Awards’ various
classification levels.
Modern Awards build ‘on top’ of the NES, so it’s
very important employers are familiar with their
obligations.
3. Enterprise Agreements (EAs)
EAs are collective agreements that are negotiated
between employers and their employees. The
negotiation process is clearly laid out in the Fair
Work Act 2009. Once an Agreement is approved by
a majority of those employees who cast a ballot,
it must then be lodged for approval with the Fair
Work Commission (FWC).
An EA can only take legal effect if it receives
this approval. Once in place, the EA effectively
replaces any Modern Awards that would
otherwise have applied to employees in that
business.
4. Record Keeping
Lastly, towards the end of the webinar, we took a
look at each employers’ obligation to:
a) Maintain accurate time and wages records, and
b) Issue compliant payslips to all employees
Strict rules require particular information to be
included in every employees’ time and wages
record and payslip, and on the spot penalties of up
to $510 per breach can be imposed!
Don’t forget to register for the next webinar on
Monday 30 March – I hope you can join me.
Kindest regards,
David Bates
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"There are currently 122 Modern
Awards which impose additional
terms and conditions of
employment in a wide range of
industries and occupation."
David Bates
Managing Director
Workforce Guardian