The Australian Hotels Association (AHA) has received a commitment from Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Tony Burke to amend the Closing the Loopholes Bill, which will allow casual workers to remain casual even if they work regular hours.
Speaking to Australian Hotelier about the commitment and the bill, AHA National CEO Stephen Ferguson said every industry body he could think of had complained about the casuals part of the bill.
Ferguson said: “The way we interpreted the bill was that anyone who had a regular pattern of work could not be a casual. The department and the minister said that was not their intention and that they didn’t think that was the way the bill was written. But every other person, every other industry group had a very strong view that that was the effect.
“A couple of examples of what that would mean are parents who want to work on the weekend while their partner works during the week, and then they could work every Saturday, that kind of employment could only be offered if it was permanent.
“And the obvious example is a university student who wants to study five days a week and then just work at weekends to earn money and charges and penalties, that would have established a regular pattern of work and the government would have said that person should have been employed as permanent.”
He added: “The difficulty there is that the person wouldn’t have been able to get penalty rates and if they didn’t they wouldn’t have been able to refuse shifts, so a parent couldn’t say no if it was school holidays or a student couldn’t say no if they wanted to go to a music festival.
“But the big problem was that at the end of that process there were fines of up to $93,000 if you made a mistake about whether someone should have been casual or permanent.”
Ferguson explained to Australian Hotelier how the bill will now be amended: “There were two parts of the bill, section 15A and 359A, and the government has agreed to completely withdraw 359A, which is the civil penalty provision for mistakes. And then they’re going to make it clear in the bill that if a person wants to do a regular pattern of work, the employer is not in breach of any employment laws if that’s the case.”
Ferguson also explained that the bill would not only affect casual workers, but would also cause concern for operators and could even put more strain on staffing levels.
“If a student walked into a pub and said ‘I’d like to work but I can only work weekends’, the operator could have said ‘I can offer you the work but it would have to be fixed shifts and so you’d be permanent and you wouldn’t get holiday pay, you wouldn’t get the 25 per cent casual pay and you wouldn’t be able to turn down shifts’, so that would have just driven workers elsewhere. So the changes maintain flexibility for the worker and the employer,” he said.
“The simple fact is that many hospitality workers actually prefer casual employment given the 25 percent wage loading and the flexibility to refuse shifts,” Ferguson said.
“Our concern with the original bill was that employers would no longer be able to systematically offer regular casual employment to those workers who were happy with it.
“The changes that have been made provide much more certainty and fairness for workers and employers, and can be seen as a win for both.
“They strike the right balance – and we thank Minister Burke for taking the time to listen to our concerns and taking action to address them.”
