Proposed new laws would give casual staff who stay with the same employer for more than one year an easier route towards permanent work, the federal government says.
The federal government will this week introduce laws that would overhaul Australia's industrial relations framework.
A key focus will be Australia's casual workforce, which is among the sectors worst affected by the economic fallout of the coronavirus recession.
The new laws would introduce a definition of a casual employee into the Fair Work Act in an attempt to ensure people are being employed legitimately as casuals.
Unions are concerned the proposed changes risk entrenching people in insecure work and will prevent misclassified casual employees from making costly liability claims.
But Attorney-General and Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter has downplayed the concerns saying the measures won't unfairly target casual workers.
"We want to create a fair system where everyone knows how people are being employed, what their rights to convert are, and how they should be paid," he told reporters.
The reforms set to go to parliament on Wednesday will also consist of tougher penalties for wage underpayments and a criminal penalty regime for wage theft, according to the federal government.
This will include by creating a new criminal offence for the most serious examples of wage theft.
The government will also push for greater compliance by increasing civil penalties for individuals and corporations.
Unions concerned for rights of casual workers
Australia has around 2.6 million casual workers. About half of those staff worked regular hours for the same employer for more than 12 months.
Casual staff were among those hardest hit by the pandemic, accounting for more than 500,000 out of 800,000 job losses at the start of the crisis.
Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus said the reforms failed to address the underlying challenges posed by insecure work.
“This proposal takes rights off casual workers, some of the hardest-hit people during the pandemic,” she said.
“This is a huge missed opportunity to begin to make jobs more secure and turn around the number of causal and insecure jobs. Instead, this proposal will entrench casual work.”
The reforms will also aim to stop employers paying up to $39 billion a year in claims from casual workers - the most controversial of the measures.
The step has been designed to prevent so-called "double-dipping" by casuals. It would work by ensuring a court deducts any identifiable casual loading paid to compensate the employee for the absence of one or more entitlements.
It comes after the Federal Court ruled a casual employee who had been effectively engaged in permanent work could be owed these benefits - on top of 25 per cent casual loading fees.
Mr Porter said the changes would not leave casual employees worse off calling criticism of the measures "mistaken".
"If you are receiving the loading, and you have a successful claim, then that loading has to be offset against that claim," he said.
"If you are never receiving the loading, and there is nothing to offset."
Labor’s industrial relations spokesperson Tony Burke is concerned casuals were in danger of losing workplace rights if employers were able to abuse their conditions without consequences.
“Coming out of the pandemic - if there's one thing Australian needs it's to have more people in secure work,” he said.
“[This] announcement is a direct attack on job security ... what they're actually doing is taking rights away from casuals ”
However, Council of Small Business Organisations Australia CEO Peter Strong said the reforms would help provide more clarity to employers hiring casual employees - including the protections against "double-dipping".
"It is now safer to employ someone - it is less risky to employ someone, that’s the message we want to get out there," he said.
The new laws will also create a new minimum standard for casual conversion so that casuals who work regular shift patterns can move - if desired - to part-time or full-time employment after 12 months.
This would apply to casuals who have worked on this regular basis for the past six months - down from 12 months.
The employee can decline the offer but request a change every six months after that if they're still eligible.
Mr Porter said the process would mean employers are required to make the offer to eligible casual employees.
"We don't want businesses doing anything artificial so that people don't fall into that category where they have a right to be offered and the bill deals with that," he said.
