9.
19 Part 8 of the new Act is headed "Workplace agreements". It also applies only to s 6(1) employers and their employees. It provides for the making, variation and termination of particular kinds of agreement, called workplace agreements. In the Second Reading Speech it was said that a "central objective of [the Amending Act] is to encourage the further spread of workplace agreements"[1].
20 The previous Act, in Pt VID, provided for Australian workplace agreements ("AWAs"). The relevant Part applied where the employer was a constitutional corporation, or the Commonwealth, or where the employee's primary workplace was in a Territory and in certain other circumstances. It was an example of part of the previous legislation that was based, not on the power given by s 51(xxxv), but on the powers relied upon to support the Amending Act.
21 Part 8 of the new Act provides for certain forms of agreement that may be made between employers, employees and unions which are registered organisations. A workplace agreement may be an AWA, an employee collective agreement (an agreement between an employer and persons employed in a single business or part of a single business), a union collective agreement (an agreement between an employer and one or more organisations of employees), a union greenfields agreement (a collective agreement between an employer and one or more organisations of employees where the agreement relates to a new business), an employer greenfields agreement, or a multiple-business agreement. Workplace agreements become operative when lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate. As was the case under the previous Act, there is no requirement for certification or approval by the AIRC.
22 In general, workplace agreements are to include dispute settlement procedures chosen by the parties, in the absence of which a model dispute resolution process in Pt 13 will be taken to be included in the agreement. Where applicable, certain protected award conditions are taken to be included in a workplace agreement to the extent that the agreement does not expressly exclude or modify them. Workplace agreements must not contain "prohibited content". This is a topic the subject of a separate issue that will be considered below. What matters are prohibited content is the subject of the Regulations which have prescribed, for example, terms relating to the deduction from wages of union
- ↑ Second Reading Speech of the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service, Australia, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 2 November 2005 at 17.
