Question

Explain Coles’ the maximum pay and conditions in the awards, agreement,etc, to which the workers could be entitled and the mechanisms used by the employers to circumvent those entitlements.

Answer 1

The employers need to present material to the FWC that demonstrates that each employee covered by a proposed agreement will be “better off overall” when compared to the relevant award. Employers must provide their employees with at least their minimum entitlements.

Some employees are not covered by an award or an enterprise agreement. For these employees, a national minimum wage order provides a safety net of minimum wages.

The National Employment Standards (NES) are minimum standards that cannot be overridden by the terms of enterprise agreements or awards.

Your minimum wages and conditions are most likely to be set by an enterprise agreement.

Most enterprise agreements include:

1. wage rates
2. employment conditions (e.g. hours of work, meal breaks, overtime)
3. a consultation process
4. dispute resolution procedures
5. deductions from wages for any purpose authorised by an employee.

Enterprise agreements cannot include unlawful content (such as discriminatory or objectionable terms).

If you are not covered by an agreement, your minimum wages and conditions are likely to be set by a modern award.

The modern award will deal with:

1. minimum wage rates
2. annual leave, and annual leave loading
3. other types of leave
4. hours of work
5. penalty rates, overtime and casual rates
6. allowances
7. consultation, and
8. many other minimum conditions.

The employers who through their enterprise agreements seek to pay award rates or rates very close to the award, care must be taken when seeking to offset deficiencies in monetary entitlements with improved contingent entitlements.  

For example:- provisions that supposedly “buy out” sundry award allowances with an all up “BOOT”-style allowance are relatively common in enterprise agreements in the labour hire industry. More widespread are practices, like at Coles, where employers seek to change what are considered by many to be outdated penalty rate systems, particularly for weekend or after hours work.