{"id":2526,"date":"2021-08-05T04:00:08","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T04:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horner-au.ap.applyflow.com\/uncategorized\/high-court-provides-clarity-casual-employment\/"},"modified":"2024-11-12T02:20:41","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T02:20:41","slug":"high-court-provides-clarity-casual-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/high-court-provides-clarity-casual-employment\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court provides clarity on casual employment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our peak industry body for the staffing sector, the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association (RCSA) recently shared this announcement:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Casual Employment Common Sense Prevails in the High Court of Australia<\/strong><\/h2>\n

On 4 August 2021, the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal from the judgment of the Full Federal Court in the matter of WorkPac v Rossato & Ors. <\/em>In doing so, the Court set aside the orders made by the Full Federal Court on 29 May 2020, and in their place, declared the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mr Rossato was a casual employee for the purposes of ss 86, 95 and 106 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) in respect of each of the six assignments with WorkPac Pty Ltd between 28 July 2014 and 9 April 2019; and<\/li>\n
  2. Mr Rossato was a \u201cCasual Field Team Member\u201d for the purposes of the WorkPac Pty Ltd Mining (Coal) Industry Enterprise Agreement 2012.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In their judgment, the High Court held that a \u201ccasual employee\u201d is one who has no firm advance commitment from the employer as to the duration of their employment or the days (or hours) they will work, and provides no reciprocal commitment to the employer. Where parties commit the terms of their employment relationship to a written contract and thereafter adhere to those terms, the requisite firm advance commitment must be found in the binding contractual obligations of the parties; a mere expectation of continuing employment on a regular and systematic basis is not sufficient for the purposes of the Fair Work Act 2009<\/em> (Cth). Essentially, the Federal Court \u201cstrayed from the orthodox path\u201d in approaching the characterization of employment relationship by reference to the parties\u2019 conduct rather than the written contract terms.<\/p>\n

    This judgment is fantastic news for not just our members, but for all casual employers in Australia. It is a correction of the errors of the Federal Court and reaffirmation of the Federal Government\u2019s action in passing the Fair Work Amendment Act 2021<\/em> earlier this year. The Federal Court turned casual employment in Australia on its head and placed an enormous financial liability on the heads of countless businesses by allowing casual workers to \u2018double-dip\u2019 on entitlements where it was determined that the parties\u2019 conduct outside of the contract constituted a \u201cfirm advance commitment\u201d.<\/p>\n

    Without the Government\u2019s actions, employers would have been waiting until today to once again employ casual workers with confidence and certainty. This was not a gamble we were willing to take. Australia\u2019s economic recovery has been allowed to accelerate out of the downturn that COVID-19 placed us in because of the Government\u2019s determination to right the unintended wrongs that came out of the court processes.<\/p>\n

    Employers of casual workers can now do what they do best with confidence, knowing that they have the full support of both our Parliament and the Judiciary. It is pleasing to see that when it comes to industrial relations in Australia, common sense has once again prevailed.<\/p>\n

    The High Court has released a summary of the judgment<\/a>, as well as the full judgment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>Source: RCSA<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    Takeaway for employers<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    As previously highlighted in Horner\u2019s Hr Connect newsletter and blog posts, the issue of \u201cdouble dipping\u201d by casual workers has\u00a0been a significant concern for employers of casual workers following the previous Skene and Rossato<\/strong>\u00a0decisions<\/a> by the Full Federal Court which have now been corrected.<\/p>\n

    In light of this decision by the High Court, employers should seek advice to review their casual contracts of employment<\/a> to ensure that the terms for casual employees support the characterisation of casual employment in the context of the work being performed, taking into account the key features of the High Court’s reasoning.<\/p>\n

    Employers should also keep in mind their obligations under the recently introduced section 66B to the Fair Work Act (FWA), which requires employers to offer casual employees the choice to become permanent if they have been employed for 12 months and have worked regular and systematic patterns in the previous six months.<\/p>\n

    Need assistance?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    Please contact Horner<\/a> should you need any advice or assistance in reviewing your contracts of employment for casual workers.<\/p>\n

    Contact Darren James, Manager – Business Development on 0417 519 669 or email horner@horner.com.au<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Our peak industry body for the staffing sector, the Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association (RCSA) recently shared this announcement: Casual Employment Common Sense Prevails in the High Court of Australia On 4 August 2021, the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal from the judgment of the Full Federal Court in the matter of WorkPac v…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[60,125,111],"class_list":["post-2526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clients","tag-casual-worker","tag-human-resources","tag-industrial-relations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/2527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horner.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}