Business seeks new category of part-time worker

Business NSW chief executive Daniel Hunter said it made the proposal because unions were seeking “further and drastic disruption to the regulation of casual and part-time employment that goes well beyond the recent Closing Loopholes reforms”.

“Employers remain very concerned about the lack of flexibility that has emerged from each of the three tranches of workplace law changes made by the federal government,” he said.

“In response to union proposals to remove the flexibility that the service industries rely on, Business NSW and Australian Business Industrial submitted the commission should give consideration to a new ‘flexible’ category of part-time employment for those industries if it sided with unions to constrain current flexibilities in part-time and casual employment.”

However, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the lobby group’s proposal “not only erodes the rights of part-time workers but does nothing to promote job security”.

“This proposition by Business NSW would leave workers without any freedom to plan their lives, making it harder for those who study or have caring responsibilities to access the job market,” she said.

“It would be a massive backward step for workers, seeing a 10 per cent loading instead of 25 per cent, and remove all predictability on hours and income.”

An FWC panel, led by president Justice Adam Hatcher, is reviewing common awards, including fast-food, hospitality, administration, retail, childcare and social work, to ensure they meet Labor’s recently introduced job security objective for the commission.

Casual employees are entitled to a 25 per cent loading as compensation for not having permanent entitlements such as annual leave or sick pay.

However, the ACTU has called for the FWC to increase the loading to ensure it fairly compensates casuals for all the permanent benefits they trade away or else introduce new forms of paid leave for the workers.

It also wants to ensure part-timers are paid overtime for working outside their agreed hours and have greater stability in rostering.

In most service sector awards, employers can change part-timers’ agreed hours without attracting overtime if they give seven-days notice or get the worker’s agreement.

Business NSW has told the FWC it will advance its new category if the commission accepts the unions’ proposals “to diminish the operability of casual employment” or if it rejects employers’ current capacity to flex up part-time hours by agreement at ordinary rates.

The new category is similar to the lobby group’s proposal in 2018 for a new “perma-flexi” employee in response to Federal Court precedents that required employers to backpay casuals leave and other entitlements when they worked regular shifts.

Under its latest proposal, the new “flexible” part-timers would also have a right to request to convert to full-time or normal part-time employment if they have worked regular hours over 12 months. The employer could only refuse on reasonable grounds.