High Court to decide if mutual trust and confidence is implied in employment contracts

The High Court has granted the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (the Bank) special leave to appeal the Full Federal Court’s decision in Commonwealth Bank of Australia v Barker[2013] FCAFC 83. The case will be significant as it will be the first time the High Court has considered if an implied term of mutual trust and confidence exists in employment contracts.

Extending income management in Cape York

Image: Coen (Wikimedia Commons)

Legislation introduced into Parliament last week proposes to extend operation of income management in Cape York for a further two years until the end of 2015. This will be the third time income management has been extended in Cape York since it began in 2008. The Government argues that income management is a key element of welfare reform efforts in Cape York, which it says have 'seen improved school attendance, care and protection of children and community safety'.

Employed people or jobs: semantics or an important difference in terminology?

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

In March (2013), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released new analysis of the Australian labour market based on jobs. Their article, Estimating jobs in the Australian Labour Market, outlines the differences between the number of jobs and the number of employed people, and complements regular labour market data produced by the ABS. Estimates of the number of jobs were produced using the monthly Labour Force Survey, the quarterly Job Vacancies Survey and the 2007 Survey of Employment Arrangements, Retirement and Superannuation.

Is an employee who resigns entitled to leave-loading on their unpaid annual leave?

Since the Fair Work Act 2009 (FWA) was introduced, there have been differing views regarding how to calculate the amount payable to an employee who has untaken annual leave when they cease employment. Is it calculated using the employee’s base rate of pay, or must it (if the employee is entitled to it) include leave-loading?

Stephen Edward Ryan v Whitehaven Coal Mining Pty Ltd (Ryan v Whitehaven)* may be the first case to have considered the issue. The court ruled that where an employee is entitled to leave-loading, the amount payable for any untaken annual leave must include leave‑loading.

Public sector staffing reductions in the states and territories

Since 2011 the state and territory governments have introduced public sector staffing reductions as savings measures (some jurisdictions also had reduction programs in place prior to 2011). A summary of the reductions is provided below; ‘FTE’ is not a headcount but refers to full-time equivalent staffing levels.

For the Commonwealth Government, the 2012–13 Budget estimates a staffing reduction in the Australian Public Service of 3 074 FTE for 2012–13 to be achieved in the main by a combination of natural attrition and voluntary redundancies. In November 2011 the Government also increased its efficiency dividend rate to 4.0 per cent for 2012–13 (up from a rate of 1.5 per cent per annum).

In 2011 and 2012 the Queensland, Victorian, New South Wales and Northern Territory Governments commissioned independent reviews of public sector finances, expenditure and management. The federal Leader of the Opposition has stated that a Coalition government will establish a commission of audit to review Commonwealth Government operations.

Disability employment in Australia and the OECD

Source: University of York

Accounting firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has released a report outlining a series of principles that it believes should guide the implementation of the national disability insurance scheme proposed by the Productivity Commission. In the report, PwC cites statistics which indicate that Australia ranks 21st out of 29 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in employment rates for people with a disability. It also highlights the fact that Australia is ranked 27th out of 27 OECD countries when it comes to relative poverty risk for people with a disability.

The first of these figures begs the question: Why does Australia perform so poorly relative to other OECD countries in terms of employment of people with disability? And, relatedly, are there any lessons to be learned from other OECD countries as to how this situation might be improved?