With 3500 unfair dismissal claims between Jan and March 2019, a whopping 81% of arbitrated claims have been dismissed. BUT the cost to pet industry business is horrendous, with many employers being forced to endure the cost, time and complexity of the system.

Under current rules, pet businesses with less than 15 workers are subject to the Small Business
Unfair Dismissal Code, which the Fair Work Commission (FWC) considers before it decides if an employee has been dismissed harshly, unjustly or unreasonably.
The code notes that full-time, part-time or regular casual workers can’t make unfair dismissal claims against small businesses if they’ve been employed for less than 12 months. It also enables small-business owners to dismiss a worker after just one warning, rather than the three-step feedback process required for larger firms.
The Code has protections for cases of genuine redundancy, (eg in business downturn) and lists employee rights as well.

But the protections aren’t doing their job, with employees stating actions when they are not warranted – resulting in lots of businesses getting sucked into unfair dismissal hearings.

If an disgruntled employee Googles “unfair dismissal advice” a huge list of no-win-no-fee lawyers appear wanting to take a case even if they know they will lose. And in addition, many “for profit” lawyers support spurious complaints in the hope that business owners will relent and pay “go away”
money.

The whole Code needs a re-write, and Pets Australia will be representing the industry lobbying for change.

A recent court case resulted in casuals being paid annual and sick leave when they left, as well as casual loading while they were employed. It’s an Australia-wide industry decision with huge implications for the Australian pet industry.

Here’s what your pet businesses need to know to avoid Fair Work action on your business.

The Federal Court ruled that a casual worker was actually a permanent employee and granted annual and carers leave entitlements to two workers who took the case against Workpac.  See legal opinion on the ruling here.

The decision revolved around that fact that the “casual” employees were given a consistent and inflexible roster that was set some time in advance. The Court ruled that the definition of “casual” – which largely relates to having employees “on tap” to cover peaks and troughs in the workflow – did not apply when there was predictable and consistent rostering over a period of time.

Workpac is now required to pay these (and presumably all other employees in similar circumstances) annual and carer’s leave entitlements in addition to the ‘casual loading’ which is paid to real casual workers and is normally meant to “cover” for not normally having these allowances. So effectively they are being made to pay twice!

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: follow these steps

1. Make your rosters flexible. Have too many casuals if necessary so that you can roster different people at different days and times
2. Ensure that you do not give your casuals so many hours that they cannot legitimately work for someone else
3. Ensure your workplace contracts specify that the employee is casual and that working hours will change from week to week from 0 hours to up to 35 hours.
4. Avoid “anti-competition” clauses that mean casuals can’t work for other people
5. For great casuals that you want to put onto regular hours, consider switching them to permanent-part-time. It’s better for your cash flow too!

For the full legal ruling, click here.

Copyright : rawpixel

If you employ staff on weekends, you need to read this! A number of staff have taken pet businesses “to the cleaners”!

Two Boarding Kennels and a number of grooming members have accidentally fallen foul of the Fair Work laws in relation to penalty rates.

To stay out of trouble DO THIS:

1. Penalty rates ARE payable to staff on Minimum Wage or equivalent

2. You CANNOT get out of this by having an employment contract with the staff member stating that no penalty rates are payable, even if they sign the contract

3. You CANNOT get out of this by employing as casual, or part-time.

4. You GENERALLY can’t get out of this by employing staff as contractors. A contractor, by definition, can work for other people including grooming and boarding and other animal businesses, which results in a clear Biosecurity risk (and in some cases a risk of the staff member contacting your clients as well in a massive conflict of interest). You CANNOT require a “contractor” only to work in other-than-animal businesses, if you do so it’s “sham contracting”, which is illegal.

You CAN reduce your penalty rates by:

a) Blending penalty rates into your general pay rate. For example, if the general pay rate is $25 (example only!) and penalty rates would cost you an additional $10, it may be possible to make your general pay rate at $27 with weekends built in. THE TEST THAT FAIR WORK USES is that the employee should be NO WORSE OFF OVERALL– in other words, add up all the rates and all the hours and average it out so the employee is no worse off.

b) Staffing differently at weekends. Businesses have to pay higher rates at weekends because weekends are considered “special family time”. Do you like to work weekends? If not, then that’s the reason why weekends are considered “special family time”. One way to reduce penalty rates is to staff weekdays and work weekends yourself – BUT – you then MUST take two other days each week away from the business to avoid burnout.

c) Use your Juniors at weekends and your full-priced staff during normal business hours

d) Go on the attack – make your business really fly on weekends to make up the penalty rates. This may include higher prices on weekends to offset the client convenience of being able to have their dogs groomed without the diary difficulties that busy clients have during normal business hours.

Pets Australia is looking at the option of developing enterprise bargaining agreements. If you are interested in this option contact the office.