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The unfair fairwork regime

Consider this, a full time  employee who does the bare minimum to keep their job, has been on performance review twice and is  regularly ill so as to maintain accrued sick leave at close to zero takes two days sick leave, is paid the next day and resigns late that night by text message effective immediately, saying they have taken a job elsewhere and will not return to the business.

While I agree with the rules employers must follow to ensure fair employment conditions, for genuine fairness rules should be in place to ensure fairness from the employee to the employer.

There should be tougher consequences for full time employees who leave a job without a notice period. In the scenario outlined above the employee had two days accrued annual leave and no accused sick leave. This left the employer with little capacity to deal with the lack of notice as allowed for in the Award:

If an employee fails to give the required notice the employer may withhold from any monies due to the employee on termination under this award or the NES, an amount not exceeding the amount the employee would have been paid under this award in respect of the period of notice required by this clause less any period of notice actually given by the employee.

It is situations like the one above that encourage small business retailers to hire casuals rather than full time employees.

This also reinforces the importance of previous employment checking, beyond reference checking.

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Newsagency management

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  1. Dean

    When we bought our business we did what we thought was the right thing and offered our staff part time contracts.

    We quickly learned that most staff will then use this to abuse their sick leave entitlements.

    We now only offer casual employment.

    No work = no pay.

    6 likes

  2. Colin

    The minority are making it hard for employers. Also having to battle the entitlement society by denying entitlements to better staff.

    0 likes

  3. eric

    the best employees are your family members, they can’t run away from you.

    3 likes

  4. Neil

    Not much has changed in 5 years since this article then? Not much of a revolution if you’re still asking for the same thing and doing nothing different to get it.

    http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2011/02/14/not-all-newsagents-are-the-same-whe-it-comes-to-magazine-returns/

    0 likes

  5. Mark Fletcher

    I received this ridiculous email today in response to this post, by someone not with enough belief in their opinion to use their real name:

    Who on earth would want to work for an employer who posts this about his staff?
    http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2016/10/27/the-unfair-fairwork-regime

    Shame on you.

    4 likes

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