Re-drafted Pay Equity Regulations
Mark Henley The Federal Government has indicated that they intend to release the new Fair Work Regulations in the coming weeks. The re-drafted Regulations were provided to QCOSS for comment earlier this week. We are aware the Australian Services Union and the Queensland Government were also requested to comment. This round of consultation was extremely limited, both in scope and timeframes and QCOSS encouraged the Minister’s office to seek comment directly from other members of the sector. In the few days QCOSS had to view the draft regulations we conducted conversations with other peaks and Jobs Australia before developing our feedback which is due this week. The responses from the survey we conducted over the past months have been extremely beneficial for this work. With feedback from over 100 hundred organisations of the 316 listed organisations this provides a strong platform to assist shape our response.
The new draft of the Regulations has obviously changed from the original Regulations: the backpay period is reduced, clarity is provided on the required rates of pay, backpay for past staff can be paid in instalments and there is more clarity around what types of organisations may be exempt from the Regulations. Our feedback to the Federal Government will provide advice on whether these changes have gone far enough.
Whilst we continue to support pay equity and the preservation of the Queensland pay equity decision, one of our key recommendations continues to be that organisations are given sufficient time to effectively manage the financial, organisational and other matters required between the release of the new Regulations and the implementation date.
We also took the opportunity to again outline our position that both the Commonwealth and State governments should both fund the full, fair cost of service delivery for government contracted services and provide an “Industry Support Package” to address (in a transitional way) the impact on unfunded organisations.
We will continue to circulate news as it comes to hand.
