Terminating Pre-reform Agreements in the Simpler System

By Mark Branagan and Jacinta Lane

The Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard (AFPCS) is supposed to provide a floor for wages and conditions, and it prevails over an existing agreement or contract of employment that provides different standards

That is so long as, supposedly, the AFPCS is superior to the existing agreement. Agreements reached under pre WorkChoices legislation are not required to match the AFPCS. The employees are much better off matching conditions on the No Disadvantage test rather than the minimal AFPCS.

This article is aimed at employers to set out how a pre-Workchoices agreement stays in place under the new regime and how they might be able to terminate the agreements. It also shows how the legislation is written to preserve the award or agreement entitlements, and thus freezes these (ie really preserves them) so they cannot be negotiated any further and will drop back to or below the AFPCS.

(LexisNexis Butterworths Employment Law Bulletin; vol 12, no 1 March 2006)