Awards have regained their importance in the Australian industrial relations system. The Fair Work Act 2009 introduced both modern awards and the National Employment Standards (NES). The NES provides a set of minimum employment standards which are applicable to the great majority of Australian employees. The approximately 122 modern awards are the result of an amalgamation process which reduced what were previously 1500 awards. Modern awards provide an additional range of employment conditions and must be read in conjunction with the NES.
 

Workplace agreements, which were promoted by the previous industrial relations system (know as ‘WorkChoices’) no longer take such a prominent role. They remain a part of the industrial relations landscape and are available as collective agreements between an employer and its employees. Individual workplace agreements are no longer available, however. Employers who wish to have individual employment arrangements with their employees can still do this, however they now need to use individual employment contracts.

 

WorkplaceInfo has a large amount of information relating to awards and agreements. A good place to start any research is with the Employment Topics A-Z. For example, there you will many entries relevant to awards and agreeemnts including Awards (modern) and Agreements and bargaining.

 

 

From 1 January 2010, the National Employment Standard (NES) override the relevant provisions in an existing workplace agreement, where the NES is more favourable. 

 

This means that if the agreement provides conditions less favourable than those provided by the NES, the NES conditions will apply, while conditions under the agreement that are more favourable than the NES will prevail over the NES.
 

However, a condition in a modern award that is more favourable than the NES does not override the relevant provision of an existing workplace agreement.
 

For example, if a modern award prescribes 12 days per annum personal/carer’s leave, this does not prevail over an agreement that prescribes 10 days leave, because the agreement complies with the minimum entitlement provided by the NES.
 

However, an agreement made from 1 January 2010 is required to pass the Better Off Overall Test (‘the BOOT’), which means the more favourable award entitlement must be considered when presenting the agreement for ratification before Fair Work Australia. In other words, the proposed agreement will be compared by FWA to the most closely applicable modern award and must leave the workers ‘better off overall’ under the agreement, compared to that award.

Award/agreement free employees
 

For an extensive library of policies, agreements, forms, correspondence and checklists, designed to make human resources (HR) management easy for your business see our HR Advance website.