Significant changes to our functions start today as a result of amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 made by the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024.
You can read about this on our New laws webpage.
From today, the laws:
- empower us to deal with applications relating to disputes about the right to disconnect
- change the definition of casual employment and change the pathway from casual to permanent employment and our role in relation to disputes
- change the general protections provisions in relation to sham contracting and protected workplace rights
- give us powers relating to 'employee-like' workers performing digital platform work including:
- the ability to make minimum standards orders
- dealing with disputes about unfair deactivation from a digital platform
- give us powers relating to the road transport industry including:
- the ability for new Expert Panels to make minimum standards orders and road transport contractual chain orders, and deal with certain modern award matters
- dealing with regulated road transport worker disputes about unfair termination of a contract
- a new road transport objective applying to certain road transport industry matters
- allow us to register collective agreements relating to regulated workers and businesses
- extend some workplace delegates' rights to regulated workers
- give us powers to deal with disputes about unfair contract terms for independent contractors
- inserts a definition of employee and employer for the purposes of the Fair Work Act 2009.
We have published a range of information and education materials to help you understand the new laws. You can access these materials from the New laws page on our website.
Application forms and forms for those responding to applications in our new jurisdictions have also been published. These forms can be accessed from the Forms page on our website.
We have also today published a decision [2024] FWCFB 316 together with determinations changing modern awards to resolve potential uncertainty and difficulty in interactions between existing modern award provisions and new laws about casual employment. The changes to modern award provisions come into effect from 27 August 2024.
You can keep up to date about reform implementation and changes by subscribing to Announcements or following us on LinkedIn .
