In recent events a landmark court ruling has found casual workers are entitled to paid leave. This decision has wide reaching consequences for businesses & supports a set of class action lawsuits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from employers. What does this mean for businesses?
Casual Workers Eligible for Paid Leave – Since the ruling claims have arisen from employers that casual workers will be able to ‘double dip’ by receiving both casual loadings and annual leave. Casual loadings are usually worth 25 percent of a casual employee’s pay, meaning this could cost employers up to $8 billion if those workers annual leave was to be paid out.
It was found by the Federal Court that casual workers who worked regular and predictable shifts with an advanced commitment to work were not casuals, regardless of the way they were described in their contracts, meaning they were entitled to paid leave.
The Australian Industry Group said the decision would discourage employers bringing on casual workers and hurt the economy.
“An employee engaged as a casual and paid casual loading should not be allowed to turn around years later and claim entitlements of a permanent employee, like annual leave”.
Robert Rossato, a black coal mine worker was employed by Work Pac a labour hire company for 3.5 years until 2018 where he worked across different projects as a permanent worker despite being labelled a casual in his contract. Mr Rossato worked across six contracts on Glencore mines was paid what WorkPac described as a 25% casual loading built into his wage, but it was found he still had leave entitlements.
Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Mr Rossato to have work that was “regular, certain, continuing, constant and predictable” and not casual while under one of his contracts that required him to work seven days on, seven days off with 12 hour shifts set in advance.
For further information, please refer to:
Source: Sydney Morning Hearald
Title: Casual workers win big on annual leave, sick leave in landmark ruling
Read Time: 2 Minutes