Tool Box
Issue No. 36 - August/September 2007
Making plans for the future
by Mr Shayne Bakewell
The best advice is inevitably do what is in the best interests of your business now, based on the prevailing legislation and the needs of your business.
The recent amendments to legislation by the Howard government have effectively closed the key differences between the parties on workplace legislation. At this stage there remain only two key contrasting issues.
1. The right of an employer to offer an employee an AWA. This will be removed under the Rudd government.
2.The right of an employer with less than 100 employees to dismiss an employee without fear of a claim for unfair dismissal.
Do you have the right staff?
Let's deal with point 2 to start with. One would presume that by now the business community would have figured out that any employee who was a “bad egg” would have, or could have been dismissed for performing or behaving poorly. Judging by the number of enquiries moving through our office on this topic, there have been infrequent uses of this power.
That's not to say that employers don't enjoy the right the have the power, but in practice the frequency of its use has been sparing. Is it really going to make a huge difference to the way business conducts itself. The realistic answer is no, especially while there is a strong demand for scarce labour and the ability to recruit basic skills to vacant position remains a challenge.
To the extent that businesses wish to assess their staffing needs ov...
