Fair Work Relationship In Australia

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There is a widespread belief that employment relationships are characterised by a systematic imbalance of power between employers and employees . The principles of law, which govern the relationship between employer and their employees, have been developing in Australia for centuries to get to it’s current state. It is not accurate to assume that a contract between an employee and employee is contract between two equals. The changes and development of the law governing employee relations over the last 30 years in Australia have perhaps been the most significant. Statute is a mechanism which attempts to encounter inequalities between employee and employers. Preceding the Fair Work Act were three major events which had a significant…show more content…
The principal areas of reform enshrined in the legislation involved: enterprise bargaining; awards; unfair dismissal; secondary boycotts; and the right to strike. As well the Act establishes the new Industrial Relations Court to Australia to oversee the operation of the new system at the judicial level. Before the reform, almost all Australian employees were covered by awards, handed down by state and federal arbitration tribunals, which regulated the conditions of their employment in considerable details. The Act allowed and in fact, encouraged, workplace disputes to be settled by enterprise bargaining under Part VIB of the act, which was headed “Promoting Bargaining and Facilitating Agreements’. If disputes were not settled within the workplace the Australian Industrial Relations Commission would step in, formerly known as the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. In contrast, the award system has been relegated to a subordinate role. Awards were to act as “a safety net of minimum wages and conditions underpinning direct bargaining” (s88A(b)) . The new legislation made it clear Agreements were now the focal point of the federal system with awards acting as a safety

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