The Fair Work Commission and Queensland State Government have recently announced changes which may impact your HR and payroll.
Annualised salary arrangements
The Fair Work Commission is bringing new rules around annualised salary arrangements into force from March 2020.
The new arrangements require employers to record and reconcile the hours worked by their staff on annualised salaries, and ensure their remuneration matches their hours worked under the relevant award.
The ‘model’ new clauses for annualised salary arrangements were published by the Fair Work Commission in the 2019 Annualised Wage Arrangements decision. The FWC has also published its full decision for the annualisation of employee wages, as well as the recent decisions on specific awards.
Modern Awards for 2020
The Fair Work Commission has been reviewing all modern awards since 2014, as part of the four-yearly assessment of all modern awards.
On 2 September 2019, the Commission released a decision that they will be releasing the new versions of the awards in three groups displayed as ‘tranches’.
The first group of varied awards came into operation on 4 February 2020 and are now available on the FWC Modern awards list. Awards that have been varied can be identified by the year ‘2020’ in their title.
The second group of varied awards will come into operation on 13 April 2020 and 4 May 2020. To access the new versions of awards before they come into operation, click on the link in the awards list ‘Future awards’ column.
Portable long service leave for community services in Queensland
Commencing 1 July 2020, the Queensland Government will proceed with extending portable long service leave (PLSL) to the Social and Community Services sector. Excluded services from the scheme include general health services, childcare and aged care.
A similar scheme for community services operates in the ACT and Victoria to allow the industry’s highly mobile workforce to accumulate a long service leave (LSL) entitlement based upon their continuous service in the industry, rather than with a single employer.
Policy objectives include:
- provide workers with a PLSL entitlement after 7 years’ service
- require an employer to pay a levy calculated on an employee’s ordinary wages
- be administered by the existing PLSL Authority, QLeave.
The Queensland Government has recently released the decision document outlining the decision and reasoning. Read the Explanatory Notes for the Community Services Industry (Portable Long Service Leave) Bill 2019.
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