Casual employees conversion to permanent: URGENT
During 2018, the Fair Work Commission, as part of it on-going award modernization obligations, amended most modern awards to include a mandatory casual conversion clause which will allow casual employees to convert to part-time or full-time permanency, in certain circumstances. Although there a few modern awards which already contain such a clause, most are silent on this point.
As a consequence, more than 80 modern awards have now been amended to include a right for casual employees covered by modern awards to request a change of employment from casual to permanent, normally part time. In other words a regular casual employee employed on terms governed by a modern award will be entitled to request that their employment be converted to permanent. In such a case an employer may only decline the request upon reasonable business grounds.
Before the end of THIS……yes THIS year, 2018 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.