A modern award (or award previously known as an "industrial award") is a ruling in

Australian labour law Australian labour law sets the rights of working people, the role of trade unions, and democracy at work, and the duties of employers, across the Commonwealth and in states. Under the ''Fair Work Act 2009'', the Fair Work Commission creates a na ...

of the national

Fair Work Commission The Fair Work Commission (FWC), until 2013 known as Fair Work Australia (FWA), is the Australian industrial relations tribunal created by the ''Fair Work Act 2009'' as part of the Rudd Government's reforms to industrial relations in Austral ...

(or its predecessor) or by a state

industrial relations Industrial relations or employment relations is the multidisciplinary academic field that studies the employment relationship; that is, the complex interrelations between employers and employees, labor union, labor/trade unions, employer organ ...

commission which grants all wage earners in one industry or occupation the same minimum pay rates and conditions of employment such as

leave entitlement Leave may refer to: * Permission (disambiguation) ** Permitted absence from work *** Leave of absence, a period of time that one is to be away from one's primary job while maintaining the status of employee *** Annual leave, allowance of time awa ...

overtime Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways: *by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...

and

shift work Shift work is an employment practice designed to keep a service or production line operational at all times. The practice typically sees the day divided into shifts, set periods of time during which different groups of workers perform their ...

, as well as other workplace-related conditions. The national awards, with the National Employment Standards, provide a minimum safety net of terms and conditions of employment for all national system employees. The pay rates are often called award wages or award rates. Awards in Australia are part of the system of

compulsory arbitration Compulsory arbitration is arbitration of labor disputes which laws of some communities force the two sides, labor and management, to undergo. These laws mostly apply when the possibility of a strike seriously affects the public interest. Some labor ...

in industrial relations.

History

Federal awards in Australia were stripped back to number 122 under the Abbott government, to promote the

Enterprise Bargaining Agreement Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole indust ...

system. A similar system was also used in New Zealand prior to the '' Labour Relations Act 1987''. New Zealand no longer uses the award system, and the only form of

collective bargaining Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and labour rights, rights for ...

collective agreement A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with a ...

s, which apply only to the particular unions and employers that negotiate them.

Notes

References

*J Riley Munton, ''Labour Law: An Introduction to the Law of Work'' (OUP 2021) ch 5, 101-3

External links

* {{cite web , title=Welcome to the Fair Work Ombudsman website , website=Fair Work Ombudsman , date=10 June 2020 , url=https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ Australian labour law Industrial agreements

History

See also

Notes

References

External links