Casual conversion: notification obligations by 1 January 2019
Businesses with casual employees, listen up!
Last year we informed you that there was a change a-comin’ for long-term regular casual employees (you can read that article here).
As it stands, more than 80 modern awards have now been amended to include a right to request casual conversion clause. In essence, a regular casual employee has the right to request that their employment be converted to permanent, and the employer can only refuse the request on reasonable business grounds.
Before the end of the year, if your business employs casuals, you must:
-
identify any modern award applicable to those employees;
-
check out if the modern award has a casual conversion clause;
-
if so, follow the notification obligations.
The key is that you must send the notification to existing casual employees by 1 January 2019.
For any award-covered casual employees that you employ in the future, you will need to provide notification within the first 12 months of their employment.
Got questions? Give us a call!
Authors: Amber Sharp and Ryan Murphy
Leading Partner: James Mattson