Company gets past union hurdles and new agreement will operate from Tuesday
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has approved JAT Refrigerated Road Services’ enterprise agreement that comes into force next week.
The Queensland brand of the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) had earlier raised a number of issues but the FWC has provided clarifications taking into account the company’s responses to these matters.
Referencing sub clause 28.2(b) of the Road Transport and Distribution Award 2010, FWC agreed that public holiday (Personal Leave clause, sub clauses 5.4.5) entitlements require a medical certificate for payment when personal leave is taken on the day prior to or the day after a public holiday.
Clarifying the issue related to the redundancy term (clause 6.2) the FWC states that in circumstances where an employee has an entitlement to redundancy pay they will also be entitled to receive their applicable long service leave entitlements at the same time, and the clause is not intended in any way to constrain or limit that entitlement.
On the issue of overtime pay, the FWC explains that the provisions contained in sub clause 4.2.4 of the Agreement state that entitlement to time in lieu only equates to the number of actual overtime hours worked.
In the matter of the provisions contained in sub clause 11.5.4 of the agreement, which potentially enable deductions from pay to be made by the employer in the circumstance as described in the sub clause, the FWC has approved the deductions stating that it is satisfied that the nature of the potential deductions in this case are not “unreasonable in the circumstances”.
In response to the issue of additional week of annual leave for shift workers, the FWC states that the employer has indicated that there are no shift workers, as defined, employed by the business at this point in time and there is no intention to employee any such shift workers in the future.
The agreement covers the TWU under Section 183 of the Actand will operate from January 19 until its nominal expiry date of January 19, 2019.