Many of the changes to industrial legislation canvassed at the Jobs and Skills Summit last week had already been flagged by Federal Labor during the May election campaign. However, some interesting new proposals were also discussed.

Key issues explored at the Summit included:

• paid family and domestic violence leave;
• safety net for ‘employee-like’ contractors;
• gender pay equity;
• insecure work;
• flexibility with protection;
• bargaining;
• skilled immigration; and
• superannuation

Paid family and domestic violence leave

The Federal Government has already introduced legislation to amend the National Employment Standards (NES) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) to provide for an entitlement to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave per year. It is expected that, once passed, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) will introduce an identical provision in modern awards.

Safety net for ‘employee-like’ contractors

The proposal to give the FWC powers to set wages and conditions for ‘employee-like’ workers was also discussed. The FWC’s recent (and reluctant) designation of a Deliveroo worker as an independent contractor (read more), following the Personnel Consultants and Jamsek rulings in the High Court, has highlighted the vulnerability of common law contractors who do the same work as employees without access to the FW Act safety net.

Gender pay equity

Proposals were to:

• amend the FW Act to make gender pay equity an object of the FW Act;
• insert an equal remuneration principle into the FW Act to make it easier to progress equal remuneration claims;
• establish two new expert panels for pay equity and the care and community sector in the FWC;
• amend the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) to require companies with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap publicly; and
• remove pay secrecy clauses and give employees the right to disclose their remuneration if they want (based on the argument that pay secrecy clauses are a constraint on effective bargaining for pay rises and contribute to the gender pay gap, especially in the private sector).

Insecure work

Proposals were to:

• amend the FW Act to make job security an object of the FW Act;
• amend the FW Act definition of casual employment to provide for ‘an objective test’ to prevent an employee being designated a casual in a written contract, even if they work regular, predictable hours;
• amend the NES to oblige labour hire employers to afford employees provided to a host employer pay and conditions that are no less favourable than those that would be required to be paid to an employee of the host performing the duties of the supplied worker and working the same hours or completing the same quantity of work. Host employers will be obliged to treat labour hire much the same as direct employees and to ensure the labour hire employer complies with its NES obligation. Exceptions will apply for host employers that employ fewer than 15 employees, and for on-off temporary assignments of 3 months or less; and
• amend the FW Act to limit fixed-term contracts for the same role to two consecutive contracts or one with a maximum duration, including renewals, of 2 years. Exceptions will apply in limited circumstances, i.e. where fixed-term contracts have a legitimate purpose, such as where the contract is related to specific time period or project, or to manage an expected but temporary surge in work.

Flexibility with protections

Proposals were to amend the FW Act to:

• strengthen access to flexible working arrangements;
• make unpaid parental leave more flexible; and
• make sexual harassment in the workplace unlawful and to give the FWC powers to resolve disputes about workplace sexual harassment.

Bargaining

Proposals were to:

• allow the FWC to issue template enterprise agreements for small to medium-size employers;
• simplify the Better Off Overall Test applied to enterprise agreements;
• provide for multi-employer agreements across particular industries;
• restrict unilateral termination of expired enterprise agreements where this reduces employee entitlements; and
• sunset collective agreements made under the Work Choices laws by a particular date, if not replaced earlier.

Skilled immigration

Proposals were to:

• increase the permanent Migration Program ceiling to 195,000 in 2022–2023;
• extend visas and relax work restrictions on international students; and
• raise the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold, which sets a floor under the wage employers can sponsor workers via the temporary skills shortage visa (currently at $53,900 a year).

Superannuation

It was proposed to amend the NES to oblige employers to meet their Superannuation Guarantee obligations, thereby giving all employees a universal right to pursue underpayment of superannuation themselves, rather than rely on the Australian Tax Office.