Changes to Employment Law to Commence on 26 August 2024

The employment law landscape has experienced significant changes over the last several years. Importantly, several of these key changes come into effect on 26 August 2024, and as such, it is important that employers and employees alike are aware of the changes and how they may impact their rights and obligations.

There are other key changes that may be relevant to your business that are not outlined in this summary. Please get in touch to discuss further.

Right to Disconnect

Commencing 26 August 2024 (or 26 August 2025 for small businesses), employees will have a statutory right to disconnect. Most employees now have the right  to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact from an employer or third party outside of the employee’s working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable.

Employees should not be disadvantaged or treated adversely for exercising, or proposing to exercise their new right to disconnect as this may amount to unlawful adverse action.

Casual Employment

The definition of ‘casual employment’ will be amended to provide that the nature of the employment relationship is to be assessed by reference to the practical reality and true nature of the employment relationship.

Employers are no longer obliged to offer conversion to permanent employment, instead a new employee choice framework comes into place. Casuals will generally remain casuals unless they chose to convert to permanent employment and this conversion is accepted by the employer, required by an industrial instrument or order of the Commission.

A copy of the updated Casual Employment Information Statement must be provided to casuals at commencement of employment and at regular prescribed intervals after that (depending on the size of the business). It would be prudent to provide all casuals (new and existing) a copy of the updated Statement (which is now available on the Fair Work Commission’s website) as soon as possible.

Independent Contractors

Commencing 26 August 2024, the definition of employment will be amended to provide that the ordinary meaning of employee and employer will be determined by assessing the real substance, practical reality and true nature of the working relationship between the parties by considering the ‘totality of the relationship.’

The changes revert the employee vs independent contractor characterisation to the “multi-factorial” test and unwind recent High Court authority which set down a different test for determining whether a worker was an employee or independent contractor, namely, that where a comprehensive written contract exists, for the purposes of determining whether an individual was an employee or independent contractor, regard was only to be had to rights and obligations found in the terms of that contract.

Disputes about unfair terms in contracts can now be heard by the Fair Work Commission and an opt out regime is in play for high income contractors.

For further information about what these changes mean for you or your business, please contact the Employment, Discrimination & Equality Law team at Coulter Legal.