Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013
Information about the Inquiry
On 21 March 2013 the Senate referred the Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 for inquiry and report.
The Fair Work Amendment Bill 2013 would implement a number of recommendations Fair Work Act Review Panel, as well as a number of reforms which reflect the Government's policy priorities. The Bill would:
- introduce new arrangements to provide for pregnant women to transfer to a safe job, provide further flexibility in relation to concurrent unpaid parental leave, ensure that any special maternity leave taken will not reduce an employee's entitlement to unpaid parental leave and expand access to the right to request flexible working arrangements to more groups of employees;
- require employers to consult with employees about the impact of changes to regular rosters or hours of work, particularly in relation to family and caring responsibilities;
- amend the modern awards objective to require that the Fair Work Commission (FWC), when ensuring that modern awards together with the National Employment Standards provide a fair and relevant minimum safety net of terms and conditions, take into account the need to provide additional remuneration for employees working overtime; unsocial, irregular or unpredictable hours; working on weekends or public holidays; or working shifts;
- give the FWC capacity to deal with disputes about the frequency of visits to premises for discussion purposes;
- provide for interviews and discussions to be held in rooms or areas agreed to by the occupier and permit holder, or in the absence of agreement, in any room or area in which one or more of the persons who may be interviewed or participate in the discussions ordinarily take meal or other breaks and is provided by the occupier for that purpose;
- facilitate, where agreement cannot be reached, accommodation and transport arrangements for permit holders in remote areas and to provide for limits on the amounts that an occupier can charge a permit holder under such arrangements to cost recovery;
- give the FWC capacity to deal with disputes in relation to accommodation and transport arrangements and ensure appropriate conduct by permit holders while being accommodated or transported under an accommodation or transport arrangement;
- expressly confer on the FWC the function of promoting cooperative and productive workplace relations and preventing disputes; and
- make a number of minor technical amendments.
The Bill would also amend the FW Act to give effect to the Government's response to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment's report
Workplace Bullying - We just want it to stop. The Bill would:
- allow a worker who has been bullied at work in a constitutionally-covered business to apply to the FWC for an order to stop the bullying;
- adopt a definition of 'bullied at work' which is consistent with the definition of 'workplace bullying' recommended by the Committee in its report, and the proposed Safe Work Australia model Code of Practice: Preventing and Responding to Workplace Bullying;
- require the FWC to start dealing with an application for an order to stop bullying within 14 days of the application being made; and
- enable the FWC to make any order it considers appropriate (other than an order for payment of a pecuniary amount) to stop the bullying.
Submissions should be received by 15 April 2013. The reporting date is 14 May 2013.
The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online or sent by email to eewr.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details.
Alternatively, written submissions may be sent to:
Committee Secretary
Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committees
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia
Notes to help you prepare your submission are available from the website at https://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/wit_sub/index.htm. Alternatively, the Committee Secretariat will be able to help you with your inquiries and can be contacted on telephone +61 2 6277 3521 or facsimile +61 2 6277 5706 or by email to eewr.sen@aph.gov.au.
Inquiries from hearing and speech impaired people should be directed to Parliament House TTY number 02 6277 7799. Adobe also provides tools at http://access.adobe.com/ for the blind and visually impaired to access PDF documents. If you require any special arrangements to enable you to participate in the Committee's inquiry, please contact the Committee Secretariat.
Once the Committee accepts your submission, it becomes a confidential Committee document and is protected by Parliamentary Privilege. You must not release your submission without the Committee's permission. If you do, it will not be protected by Parliamentary Privilege. At some stage during the inquiry, the Committee normally makes submissions public and places them on its website. Please indicate if you want your submission to be kept confidential.
For further information, contact: Committee Secretary
Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committees
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia