BATT, Mr Jacob, State Secretary, Tasmania Branch, Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union DWYER, Mr Gerard, National Secretary-Treasurer, Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees' Association HILAKARI, Mr Luke, Secretary, Victorian Trades Hall Council HOOVER, Mr Mitchell, Industrial Relations Organiser, Victoria Branch, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation LEECH, Mr Angus, Outreach Organiser, Young Workers Centre McDONALD, Mr Liam, Lead Industrial Officer, United Workers' Union MOXHAM, Mr Ben, Director, Industrial and Policy, Australian Council of Trade Unions O'NEIL, Ms Michele, President, Australian Council of Trade Unions PREEST, Mr Simon, Union Member, Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees' Association ROBERTSON, Mr Anthony, Union Delegate, Tasmania Branch, Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union ROGAN, Ms Sarah, President, Victorian Private Sector Branch, Australian Services Union STURNI, Ms Imogen, Branch Secretary, Victorian Private Sector Branch, Australia Services Union TRIMBLE, Ms Tammy, Union Member, Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees' Association WISCHER, Ms Kristen, Senior Federal Industrial Officer, Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Committee met at 11 : 0 3 CHAIR ( Dr Garland ): I declare open this public hearing of the Standing Committee on Employment, Workplace Relations, Skills and Training for its inquiry into the operation and adequacy of the National Employment Standards. I begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I also extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today. In accordance with the committee's resolution this hearing will be broadcast on the parliament's website and the proof and official transcripts of proceedings will be published on parliament's website. I remind all present that as Chair I will ensure proceedings are conducted in an orderly, respectful and courteous way. Those present here today are advised that filming and recording are permitted during this hearing. I remind members of the media who may be present or listening online of the need to fairly and accurately report the proceedings of the committee. I now welcome witnesses for the panel of unions to give evidence. Ms O'Neil : Thank you, Chair. I want to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands we're meeting on today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay all my respects to elders past and present. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Thank you so much for the opportunity to appear in front of you today. It's pretty fitting that we're giving evidence about workers rights here today, in this building, which is the first purpose-built trades hall in the world, and especially on May Day, International Workers Day. Over its 167-year history working people through their unions have organised and campaigned for workers rights and for fair and safe workplaces. The National Employment Standards, the NES, are one of the modern-day results of those efforts. They are basic standards enjoyed directly and indirectly by about 14 million employees that are the bedrock of fairness in this country. The ACTU welcomes this inquiry into the standards. It's the first dedicated examination, and we would say long-overdue examination, of them since they came into effect 16 years ago. Overall the NES have held up pretty well over time, but today we want to address three major issues that have emerged. Firstly, problems have arisen in the application of the NES provisions by the Fair Work Commission and the courts, obstructing their intended operation and depriving workers of minimum entitlements. An example of this is that shiftworkers—including those in manufacturing, offshore hydrocarbons and nursing—have been denied the extra week of annual leave that shiftworkers are entitled to under section 87 because their shift patterns have been deemed to be insufficiently regular for highly technical and often very inconsistent reasons. We're proposing a simpler and fairer test to make sure that shiftworkers don't miss out. In addition some of the NES provisions have simply become outdated, such as the exception allowing employers to avoid redundancy pay based on what's called the ordinary and customary turnover of labour. This provision was first introduced to deal with the labour outcomes that arose from the early-1980s recession, but what it does in practice is enable an employer not to have to pay redundancy if they can argue that terminations in its business are common or usual, often just by putting really slippery words into an employment contract. That denies workers redundancy pay that helps them and their families survive at the time they need it most until they can find future work. This exception is pretty antiquated, unfair, confusing and unnecessary. Employers already have the right to make a position redundant if they no longer require a job to be done by anyone, but they shouldn't get a get-out-of-jail-free card in terms of what workers entitlements are. At one level these can be seen as pretty technical issues, but at another more important level they've got a profound impact on the lives of working people. They can be the difference between having leave to look after your sick child and not, or having redundancy pay to help a sacked worker land on their feet. Secondly, the NES need to adapt to keep pace with the modern world of work. When Australian workers are on average working 4½ weeks unpaid overtime per year there is a need to give them back time through our proposals for five weeks annual leave and taking the next step towards shorter working hours, including a four-day week, by reducing maximum weekly hours from 38 to 35. Shorter working hours are good for workers, and they're good for employers. They deliver improved productivity and allow working people to live healthier and more balanced lives. Workers work to live, not live to work. Thirdly, the NES should also expand to reflect evolving social norms. We've seen this with the inclusion of paid family and domestic violence leave in the National Employment Standards in 2023. This has already saved lives. The time is right for other new forms of leave to be recognised as minimum standards. Reproductive health leave and cultural and kinship leave are two examples. Unions will focus on those two important issues at a later hearing of the inquiry. Today what we aim to do is cover some of the technical fixes to the NES that are needed and also the proposals around giving workers back time. Given the breadth of the issues we thought it would best assist the committee to take them in turn as follows. We're going to start with Gerard Dwyer, National Secretary of the SDA, who'll speak about five weeks annual leave, and he'll have with him union members Tammy Trimble and Simon Preest. We'll also hear from Imogen Sturni and Sarah Rogan from the Australian Services Union, who are going to cover other working time issues, including the four-day week. Jacob Batt and Tony Robertson from the AMWU will deal with the unfair calculation of personal leave entitlements for shiftworkers arising from the High Court decision in the Mondelez case; Kristen Wischer and Mitch Hoover from the ANMF will speak about the shiftwork annual leave issue I mentioned earlier and how it affects nurses and midwives; Liam McDonald from the United Workers Union will address issues relating to redundancy pay and leave accruals; and Luke Hilakari, today's host and Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, will discuss the need to ease the requirements around providing medical certificates for sick leave, and he'll have with him Angus Leech from the Young Workers Centre. We hope to take questions on each topic as we go through, but we've also left time at the end for general questions from the committee, and at future hearings we hope the union movement is also going to have the opportunity to cover, with different unions and workers speaking, the need for reproductive health leave and cultural and kinship leave as well as needed reforms to long-service leave, parental leave and personal carers leave. We're not trying to cover everything today. Let me now ask Gerard Dwyer from the SDA to speak. Mr Dwyer : Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I want to focus on two matters: five weeks annual leave and also roster justice. With regard to five weeks annual leave I'd ask the committee to note Australian annual leave entitlements remain unchanged since 1974, over 50 years. We had seen increases of one week in the decade prior and the decade prior to that, between 10 and 15 years apart. What has happened since 1974? We've seen in our industry, retail, an extension to seven-day-a-week trading; we've seen the intensification of work, especially in the last five to 10 years; and we've seen productivity growth outstrip wages dramatically. Productivity growth in retail has increased by 26 per cent since 2007, and real wages have actually contracted by one per cent. We have a 27 per cent gap there for what we refer to as the social contract where productivity and wages should move hand in hand. Many workers now describe the impact of inadequate annual leave in terms of missed family time and lost social connection. Responses in our surveys repeatedly refer to being unable to attend birthdays, family gatherings, school events or significant cultural and community occasions because leave is limited and too quickly exhausted. For workers in retail with weekend work, shiftwork or extended trading hours, these losses are not occasional but cumulative, contributing to social isolation and strain on family relationships. Annual leave is therefore not simply time away from work but a key mechanism by which workers maintain meaningful connection to family, community and social life. Leave is often reserved for managing care, illness or unavoidable family commitments, while opportunities for social participation or recovery are foregone. Rising housing, energy and everyday living costs mean that workers increasingly lack both the time and the financial headroom to participate fully in family and community life. In this context, an additional week of paid annual leave represents not a discretionary benefit but a practical support that enables workers to meet family responsibilities, sustain social connection and maintain wellbeing without worsening financial pressure. Evidence suggests that productivity gains built on ongoing work intensification without corresponding investment in recovery and care capacity are unlikely to be durable. For many retail workers, annual leave is increasingly consumed by family, caring and essential life obligations, rather than rest or social reconnection. Revisiting annual leave standards is therefore best understood as a preventive structural reform, one that recognises the realities of high intensity, demanding retail work and helps sustain long-term participation, productivity and social inclusion. Moving to roster justice, the problem in short is workers face late roster changes regularly, short shifts and unpredictable hours. This lack of certainty undermines income stability, the ability to plan caring responsibilities, especially child care, study and second jobs. And it undermines the capacity to identify and challenge underpayments where they're occurring. Ongoing pressure exists because of the fear of losing hours actually discourages workers, especially young and casual workers, from raising concerns about their rosters with their employer. They simply suffer in silence. What roster justice means and what is required is this: we need advance notice of rosters. We need stable rosters. We need compensation for late changes or the cancellation of shifts. We need the capacity to interrogate computer modelling which delivers rosters, and we need the ability for human management to actually override those algorithms. It requires minimum engagement protections so that workers are not called in for uneconomic hours—by that I mean short shifts. And we need genuine limits on employer discretion to vary hours of work. Roster justice can only be achieved by workers having stable, predictable rosters, access to reasonable shift lengths, genuine agreement about work days and times and rejection of a model that allows part-timers to be used as casuals but without getting paid the casual loading. Ms Trimble : Hello, I'm a retail worker at Big W in the Dandenong Ranges in Ringwood. I'd like to touch on the four weeks annual leave if I may. Retail has a large demographic of women who are carers. They have children. They have elderly parents. They have adult children with disabilities. In my case, I have a husband who I'm a carer for. Just on a personal level, my husband got cancer. Treatment for the cancer made him unable to work any longer, and so he's had to retire early. He can no longer do the heavy work that he used to do. That's all fallen on me. When I take my leave, I have to do the heavy things he used to do—cleaning the windows, cleaning out the guttering. All of the heavy stuff around the house that I used to be able to rely on him to do, I now do during my annual leave. Our periodical appointments, our health appointments—I book those during our annual leave because I don't have time during work. Things for him, for his specialists and for optometrists—all of those periodical appointments that we need—are booked through my annual leave. I try and squeeze in a little bit of family time with my family in the country, which is very difficult, and by the time that's all done there's no time left for me. There's an ongoing joke with a lot of my colleagues that we go back to work for a rest. That extra week's leave gives us that breathing space so we can just lie down and read a book or do whatever we need to do to avoid the burnout and to get the mental health breath of fresh air that we need. I think that extra week's leave is super important. I'm very fortunate that the union for my company, Big W, have got an extra five days leave in our EBA which is progressively rolling out through the life of the EBA. Can I also quickly touch on the rosters. At the start of our employment, we're asked to fill out an availability: 'When are you available?' Periodically, they ask us to update, but they ignore it. They will just roster us and say, 'But your availability said you were available; two years ago you said you were available.' They just ignore it. Recently, Big W launched a whole new system in how they work—how they fill the stock and all of that—and it is very, very rigid in timeframes. I had one woman come to me—she's about my age—and she said: 'They want me to start at seven. I can't be here at seven. I catch the train. To get here at seven, I have to walk through dark alleys to get to the train station. I can't do it.' I needed to get union involvement to negotiate that so that they would just give her that—15 minutes is all she asked for. To me, flexible rosters and justice with rosters are super important. Mr Preest : I'm also a retail worker. I work at Target, and my Target is in your electorate, in Glen Waverley. Five weeks annual leave is, I think, really important for our industry. Retail is no longer the old nine to 5.30 Monday to Wednesday and nine to nine Thursday and Friday. We're open Sundays and public holidays as well. This also puts a lot of strain on work-life balance, particularly for those, in a predominantly female workforce, where there are caring responsibilities—with children and so on. I myself have an elderly mother. Up until about 18 months ago, I was her full-time carer, but I was holding down a full-time job in retail as well. Unfortunately, we had to place her in a nursing home because it was just too much to bear. That extra week of annual leave would be so helpful just to unwind from the day-to-day pressures of the job and the day-to-day pressures of looking after elderly parents. With the elderly population growing in the country, I'm probably not the only one in this position. It would also be a sort of wind-down time from the customer abuse that we deal with in our industry, which is why I'm wearing this badge here. Customer abuse, probably since we opened from COVID lockdowns, has been astronomical. It's just not funny. I think that extra time to take away and chill out—that extra leave to spend time with the family, spend time with the kids and spend time looking after the elderly—is much, much needed. Ms Sturni : We're very pleased to be here today to talk about the ASU submission particularly focused on the four-day work week. As a union, the feedback we receive in relation to the four-day work week is overall pretty unastonishing. I say that because it's consistent with the result of every other four-day work week trial both here and across the globe. Every time, participants, both workers and importantly business, consistently report improved satisfaction for employees, better work-life balance for employees, improvements in overall health and wellbeing, often a reduction in sick leave or unscheduled leave, and importantly an increase to productivity. There have been examples where the four-day work week trials have got off to a shaky start, but, more often than not, the key themes are that that organisation didn't have the time and the groundwork to make sure that the four-day work week trial worked for their workplace and their business. The four-day work week requires change to work. Crucially we see this as a fundamental role of organisations working together with management and employees to structure work in a way that works for the needs of that organisation. It is going to look different for different workplaces and different industries, and that should be a good thing. It's something business already does every day. We see organisations working with employees as a key part of the four-day work week success. In lots of ways, the concept of a four day work week isn't a new thing. It's something that regularly happens in work groups across the country just under different names. There's plenty of shiftwork and roster groups who already allocate their hours around a four day workweek, and it allows employees to have adequate rest time and life outside of work, and it's been working for decades. I'm sure we all know plenty of mums who work a four day work week in just about every profession, but I can't think of too many people brave or silly enough to question the powerhouse of work that they produce. To review productivity simply through a lens of hours present is doing us a disservice, and honestly it's hard to think of any good business who does. The four-day work week also presents a broader question: is life all about work? Right now, we hear, time and time again, 'Work controls my life right now.' 'A fair day's pay for a fair day's work' still rings true, but equal pillars were also always recreation and rest. Being able to pick up the kids for child care on time or help them with their homework shouldn't be a luxury. Having time to help out with the school committee or weekend sports campaign used to be sacrosanct, although I will admit that it was often very hard-working women doing more unpaid work. Anxieties about taking ageing parents to medical appointments shouldn't be because you're worried about pissing off the boss again. But right now, for many working people, even picking up the mail from the post office is a strategic nightmare. If we're serious as a country and you are serious as a government about increasing women's participation in the workforce, then we have to get serious about ensuring work models allow working women and families to do just that. Ms Rogan : I've been a member of the ASU my whole career. I'm president of the Victorian Private Sector branch; however, I'm here today as an ordinary worker. I'm here to sing the praises of a four day work week. At my workplace, a four day work week was an ASU claim in the last round of bargaining, and we were successful in securing a trial within the life of the agreement. Since that time, we've rolled out the trial. It was hugely popular, and we're now in the process of making it permanent. My organisation is a proudly feminist workplace, and the principles of gender equity informed management's decision to also embrace a shorter week. My workplace introduced a four day work week because we deeply value staff wellbeing and because we know that there is more to life than work. Getting time back to live our lives is invaluable. The realities of modern work demand an updated approach to how work is organised, and the outdated five-day model is no longer fit for purpose. We know that four focused, efficient days are enough to perform our work. My workplace had a reduction in total work hours without a reduction in wages. We worked a 30 hour week not compressed hours. Friday is the consistent day the majority of staff have off work. We made a conscious decision to ensure uniformity across the workforce, to ensure that team members are all working on the same days, making it easier to plan, collaborate, hold all the meetings and get the work done from Monday to Thursday. Flexible work arrangements are still in place, of course, so for a handful of people their day off is different. Business-essential roles ensure that we have staff on deck on Fridays. The office building is also closed on Fridays, meaning energy and cleaning costs are down. Before we began the trial, we knew that the status quo of how we arranged work and the entrenched patterns couldn't remain. It was important to change work practices to make the four-day work week a success. We had to adapt the way we work to be more productive, efficient and effective. We shook up meeting length, blocked out times in calendars to focus on tasks, and used AI carefully to assist with things like summarising workshops and action items for meetings. I'll end my opening remarks with some of the personal stories my colleagues have shared with me, which were also captured in the fortnightly surveys that the organisation ran. The first person said, 'The four-day work week has given me something invaluable—more time with my family.' The next person said: 'I'm a typical sandwich generation—ageing parents and school-aged kids. An extra day to fit everything in has been a gift. I work so hard when at work, knowing I've got Fridays to care for my family.' The third person said: 'I can manage my health and mental health on Fridays, making medical appointments without disrupting work or having to disclose more than I'd like to my colleagues. I live with chronic pain. Knowing that I have a day at the end of the week to recover, before the busyness of the weekend, has been amazing.' Another person said, 'On Fridays I can volunteer at my child's school now to help with reading.' Another person said, 'With Fridays free from work commitments, I'm finally able to finish my master's.' And the last quote: 'The four-day week has helped me contribute meaningfully at work; reclaim some balance for myself, in a world that constantly demands more; and, most importantly, actually rest.' Thank you. CHAIR: Great. We might move on to some questions for this group that we have in front of us, and I might use my prerogative as chair to get the ball rolling. It's been brought up a few times that there is a need for the National Employment Standards, as a universal safety net, to keep pace with a changing world. It's been a long time since we looked at the NES, and we're doing that now. We know workplaces are changing rapidly. We had references to artificial intelligence in some of the evidence we've just heard. So what will this look like? How do we make sure—as a broader question—that the NES is always able to keep up with our workers' needs, and how do we measure some of the claims around time against productivity? Ms O'Neil : I think you've hit on the key thing here, which is that 16 years is a very long time to not have a look at something, knowing how rapidly the world of work and the world has changed in that time. And you're right to reference AI, because we know that is only speeding up, not slowing down. One of the things we heard from Gerard Dwyer and the SDA is that workers haven't received their fair share of what have been improvements and changes in productivity over time. The figures he gave you in terms of the SDA are specific to retail, but across the board workers have really not seen the benefits of productivity improvements fairly shared. Even where there's been low productivity growth, a smaller and smaller proportion of it has gone to labour, to the workers' share; more and more has gone towards profits or businesses, rather than being equally shared. We want to make sure that, when we think about improving productivity, workers get their fair share of it, and time is a really critical issue for working people. We say this because, as you heard today, we hear directly from workers that time is precious. Knowing that the changes are going to continue, we think building in this notion of how important time is to our lives is a really important way of seeing some of that dividend for improved productivity going back to working people. We still haven't caught up with what was a decade of low wages and wages being stagnant. Workers are still four per cent below where they were at the beginning of COVID, so there's a lot of catching up to do. The final thing I'd say is that because of how rapidly work is changing, we should more rapidly review what are the minimum standards. We shouldn't wait another 16 years; we should think about what the processes are so that we can keep up to date with the changing world. CHAIR: Thank you. I have a couple more questions, and then I'll open questions up to the rest of the committee. For Simon and Tammy in particular, speaking to your experiences in the workplace, what do you think meaningful consultation and engagement would look like for you for when it comes to roster justice and how that would be put together? Mr Preest : First of all, we need to ditch, and I use that word bluntly, the idea of this AI model of human resources and rostering and pay clerks all done via computer algorithms and things like that. There's an automatic messenger service that says, 'You're rostered on for tomorrow.' That lack of human interaction in creating a roster needs to stop. It takes that whole idea of that balance of work and life—'I can't do that today; I've got to go into work. I've been given short notice by work.' This happens to a lot of the casual staff, particularly the young casual staff. We had one guy who—I was just thinking about this, actually—was training to be a winter Olympian and during the winter months he couldn't commit to his full training because he kept getting: 'Can you come and do this shift today? Somebody's called in sick.' It will just be a message on his phone. 'Come in. You said your availability is this time and this day.' They're not thinking, 'Hang on, we might have said that two, three or four years ago.' Because the computer—'computer says no!'—says that's when you're available, they say, 'Good, you'll get the message.' There is no human element to it. CHAIR: I guess you can't plan on what you would do on your day off— Mr Preest : Exactly! CHAIR: because you're waiting for the message. Mr Preest : Particularly with casual, FIFO or on-call staff, yes. CHAIR: Tammy, did you have anything to add there? Ms Trimble : Not really. They have their parameters that they need to work in, but they need to be flexible within those parameters. The person I spoke about earlier, she just needed that extra 15 minutes. There was no consultation with her. If they had sat down with her and looked at their parameters and asked, 'How can we slot this person in so that she's not made to walk down dark alleyways to get to the train'—if they'd had those consultations with her prior to just deciding, 'The company says this is how we have to do it,' we wouldn't have needed to have the discussions that we had with the union involvement, and she wouldn't have needed to have undergone that anxiety. She was looking for another job because of those 15 minutes. CHAIR: Thank you very much for that. I'm really interested in how the four-day week was evaluated through the trial process. You mentioned fortnightly surveys. Obviously, the anecdotes that you offer give some shape to the benefits to workers, but how did you evaluate, through the course of the trial, how things were tracking? Are you continuing to evaluate this now? Ms Rogan : It was really important for us to be able to look at the measures of success. There were five particular areas that were looked at. There was staff wellbeing, which of course had significant positive impact; there was more job satisfaction that people were reporting, and improved work-life balance. Maintaining work outcomes was another issue that we had to look at. It was great to see that work outcomes were not impacted by working for four days. If there were any fluctuations in income, it was completely unrelated to the four-day work week; it was related to other things. We also looked at talent acquisition and staff retention at the time. It was reported quite often in the fortnightly surveys: 'The four-day work week is one of the reasons why I work here.' The workforce remained stable throughout the time. Maintaining service qualities for partners was another one of the issues that we looked at. My organisation works with a lot of different partners, both here and internationally, and there was no decrease in satisfaction among the partners that we looked at. The other thing that was evaluated was cost neutrality around leave accruals and those sorts of things. At the start of the trial, there was a bit of an increase in TOIL accrual; however, that was balanced out by changing the hours at which staff could begin to accrue TOIL. Instead of it being at 30 hours, it became 35 hours, which was our previous ordinary hours, so it pretty much evened out by the end of the trial. And there are levers within the enterprise agreement around how staff can be directed to take leave, which has been consistent in the enterprise agreement. Those five things were evaluated throughout the time and had overwhelmingly successful and positive outcomes. CHAIR: Great. When it came to the decision, once the trial had concluded, to proceed with the four-day week in an ongoing fashion, what were those conversations like? Ms Rogan : We're in the process of bargaining at the moment to make it permanent, and it's the top issue for staff across the board. It's similar to the things that were evaluated during the time about success, wellbeing and how beneficial it was for everyone in the workplace. There are just the usual things to iron out in bargaining to make it permanent, and that's what we're aiming for. CHAIR: Great. Thank you very much. I might see if any of my colleagues have any questions. Ms LE: Yes—quite a few, actually. Mr Dwyer, you talked about the increase in productivity since 2007. My understanding is that, from COVID onwards, in terms of the retail space, more people have lost jobs as a result of everything going online. My understanding is that there are more and more retail jobs in the areas where you are working, because of the online movement. How is that impacting the retail space for workers? And, in terms of the four-day work week, I thought that it was something that could be negotiated between employers and employees already. Is my understanding correct? I thought that it was currently— Ms O'Neil : The example that you heard from the—sorry, do you want to hear from Gerard first? Ms LE: Yes. Ms O'Neil : My apologies. Mr Dwyer : Thank you. On the productivity question, we had a study done, and it included that COVID period. It goes from 2007 to last year, so it does pick up the COVID period. The productivity gains in our industry, as I said—26 per cent. But real wages had gone backwards by one per cent, and that's a fact that has been identified by university academics. We're happy to provide the report, which is called Achievingtheproductivitypromise. With regard to the online question, it's interesting, but what's probably not as visible is that, in the online space, there are a lot of jobs being created. We're a union that covers retail, warehousing and what's arising in the middle, which is this online space. What's really playing out is that you will see fewer jobs in the shops that you're used to going into, but, behind that, you will have customer fulfilment centres where people are employed in their hundreds. If you use the supermarket example, they're actually set out physically like a real supermarket. The only difference is there are no customers, but there are hundreds of people who work there. We actually haven't seen a net loss in jobs in our industry, if you take our industry to be everything from warehousing right through to the check-out. Ms LE: Okay. I know that people have said to me that they've lost jobs in the retail sector. Mr Dwyer : Yes. Ms LE: People who are used to low-skill jobs can go into a retail space to find a job. In migrant communities, for example, that's where they can find the easiest way to find a job. That's where there are the most job losses. Of course, going to a fulfilment centre means you have to acquire a different set of skills—in terms of technology and working machineries. That's my understanding. Are different types of skills required in that space, or is the same skill set required? Mr Dwyer : It's actually very similar. People will move quite easily from a supermarket, for example, to a fulfilment centre. Yes, there is some technology, but our people have dealt with changing technology for decades. The training is there. It's relatively straightforward, and they get on top of it very quickly. As I said, the total number of jobs within our industry has increased slightly, so it's just that they're moving around. To demonstrate how similar the roles can be—if you go into regional centres, some of the roles performed in customer fulfilment centres are actually performed in the supermarkets themselves. You'll have a person travelling around the store, doing the pick and using that technology. But, when you get a critical mass, or a customer base, that warrants putting in place a CFC—sorry, a customer fulfilment centre—that's when you see one built, and the jobs will move in there. Ms O'Neil: Right now, we have a 38-hour full-time week as the base in the National Employment Standards, so it's possible to make a change, in the way that you heard from Sarah, via an enterprise agreement. You are able to formally reduce the hours, which become the new full-time hours, to 30 while still paying a full-time wage, but that's through a collective bargaining process. It's not the case that, as an individual, you could still be treated as a full-time worker and have your hours reduced. You could negotiate to become a part-time worker, but then all your entitlements and everything else are also reduced. The proposal that we're talking about here is about maintaining the full-time entitlements on a lesser number of hours. CHAIR: Ms Fernando. Ms FERNANDO: My first question is to the SDA. First of all, congratulations on the great win of the Adult Age, Adult Wage campaign. Great job, and great campaigning. You mentioned in your submission about the NES that the NES are not fit for purpose. How should we ensure reforms to the NES don't push more employers towards hiring more casual employees or adopting AI automation systems? Mr Dwyer : In terms of them being not fit for purpose, I guess what was front of mind for us was this question of balance that has been used several times by people here at the table. We submit that things are out of balance. You only have to look at some of the data coming out of studies. I'd point to the Centre for Future Work's 2025 Go Home on Time Day survey, which picked up the amount of unpaid overtime that's being worked in this country. I think Michele may have referred to the 4½ weeks on average—the average full-time worker is doing 4½ weeks. We've got a lot of younger members. If you look at younger people, between 18 and 24, that figure jumps to almost 6½ weeks. This is not in balance for working people. You've also got those pressures—I've spoken about the work intensity that's increased. We're an industry that trades seven days a week, and we're not the only seven-day-a-week industry. I think that needs to be taken into consideration when we're setting national employment standards. What does all this imbalance lead to? It leads to stress, burnout and people not being able to work as long as they would like to. That's not good for productivity, and it's not good for those individuals. With regard to the casualisation question, yes, we are a union that's very focused on trying to lift permanency, be that part time—but more substantial part-time hours. We don't regard the three-hour part-time minimum as adequate. We don't regard that as a part-time job. But, unfortunately, we have a system now that says, in the service sectors, that three hours per week is a part-time job. What ends up happening is those people get used as casuals, but they don't get paid a casual loading, and that's out of balance. It's not fair. The extension of trading hours, we were told at the beginning, would create all these jobs. What it did was decimate full-time jobs and create a whole lot of part-time and casual jobs. What we need to do as a community is actually look at working life in the seven-day-a-week industries, like ours, and say, 'What does permanency look like? How do we get permanent jobs, either substantial part-time or full-time jobs, in that framework?' because we've got really outdated approaches to full time, part time and casual operating in 2026. They're just not fit for purpose. We need a different frame. With regard to AI, I'm not sure what you want me to touch on there, but with regard to how it's impacting our industry—yes, it is. You heard Simon refer to the rostering, which is a real impact on our members. We are getting rosters dictated to us without people actually talking to each other and saying, 'Is that working for you?' We did a major report a couple of years ago called the work and care report, which showed that, if you can get stability into your roster system, people will actually be able to work more hours for you. It sounds counterintuitive, but it means that, if I've got a stable roster and then you say, 'Can you do a couple of extra hours over here?' then I can say yes, because it's a one-off, but I can give you more hours. If it's really stable, I might even be able to give you those hours every week. Ms FERNANDO: Thank you very much. CHAIR: Ms Lawrence. Ms LAWRENCE: I have a couple questions around the four-day week. I understand the success of the program in terms of the workplace which you're in. It seems to be working well. I believe Bunnings has moved to—I don't know if they're trialling or fully adopting a four-day work week. I think there's clear evidence that it's clearly working well for employers and employees, but are there any sectors in which you think it may be difficult to put in place a four-day work week? I think, in the submissions, it was suggested that the NES should mandate it as opposed to allowing that flexibility. Are there sectors, particularly those that may have to be quite reactive, working across seven days, 24/7, such as consultancies or IT or unions themselves who might have to respond to workplaces on different days—are there places in which you think it may be more challenging to adopt that? Ms Sturni : When we talk about the four-day work week—interchangeably, it's the 30.4-hour week—I think different industries are going to maybe apply that slightly differently. We absolutely see the importance of that changing for shift-work environments too. We represent workers across call centres and—airlines are a good example of where you need those 24-hour shift-work environments. I think it is crucial that we're seeing a change to the concept of full-time hours, because part-time hours often revert back to that with all sorts of full-time triggers. Airlines at the moment, are sort of at the opposite scale. We have part-time workers working six days on, two days off. I think, for most people, it's insane to think that is part-time work. So, yes, we think that this is something that can apply across all industries and sectors, but it will look different in each place. Ms O'Neil : Just to clarify, what we've said in our submission is that there need to be sector specific solutions to this. We recognise, when we talk to affiliates, that, depending on the sector and industry, there's no 'one size fits all' about how to make this work. The principle is clear about workers having more time, but making it work in particular in sectors and industries needs to be addressed at that level. We've proposed a change from 38 to 35 hours as a step towards that and then sector specific solutions to look at the four-day week. Ms LAWRENCE: Thank you very much. I think the offer there was for the delivering the promise of productivity report to be sent to the committee. I think we'd really appreciate that. Thank you so much for giving evidence. Mr Batt : I'm the state secretary for the AMWU in Tasmania, and we're here to talk about what actually constitutes a day for personal leave or sick leave. The way this came about for us was that we were applying to get the agreement ratified with the Fair Work Commission at Cadbury's factory in Claremont. They've got 96 hours of leave per year, so they've actually got eight days. They run 12-hour shifts in their roster system. For them to get 10 days sick leave, they would need 120 hours leave. The Fair Work Commission approved the agreement, stating that the sick leave provisions needed to be 120 hours for those workers there. It was then appealed to the full bench of the Federal Court and then eventually to the High Court. In the High Court it was ruled that a day's leave is 7.6 hours. We've been able to negotiate into agreements the fact that a day is what that worker works. For a 10-hour shiftworker, that's 100 hours. For a 12-hour shiftworker, that's 120 hours. What we're saying is that, effectively, we shouldn't be looking at the hours attached to this. We should be looking at the days. For instance, if you've got a four-on four-off shift roster and you're doing 12-hour shifts, you will end up getting only 6.3 days sick leave. We can't see how that is fair when someone who's doing a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 job would still have an extra six days of sick leave available to them. Workers don't choose when they get sick. I've got a delegate with me here—Tony from the factory. He's got a shift roster where, out of eight days, he will work six days. Effectively, in one bout of illness, he could lose all of his leave for that period. There's a range of productivity savings for companies to be running. Instead of three eight-hour shifts in a 24/7 operation, they'll be running two 12-hour shifts because there is less changeover and things like that. Workers receive the shift penalty and night penalties attached to that for working those unsociable hours. But, while the company receives those productivity gains, workers, by working these shifts, are disadvantaged when it comes to the sick leave that they're able to accrue. That then flows on into issues with people coming to work sick. We saw that with COVID. When COVID leave came in, there were aspects of people coming to work and then passing the illness on. We went and spoke with our other workplaces that have shiftwork—either 10- or 12-hour shifts—and workers would feel that they would come to work if they're a little bit sick, and potentially that has the ability to be passed on to other workers, and then all of a sudden you've actually got a higher amount of sick leave than if workers knew: 'Well, hang on. If I've got this four-day shift rotation that I need to do, if I can take the proper two to four days instead of the one day'—we need to ensure that workers know that they've got the entitlements there such that they can come to work when they're well, they can be at home when they're not and there shouldn't be any difference between a day worker and a shiftworker for their entitlements. The act and the NES actually say 10 days; however, the decision put it into hours. While we were disappointed, obviously, with the High Court decision, there is an ability, with this inquiry, for that to be fixed so that all workers are treated fairly regardless of whether they're day workers or shiftworkers. Mr Robertson : Thanks for having me. I'm a long-term employee at the Mondelez Claremont site. As Jacob's touched on, obviously, the leave that we receive is not adequate. We're being disadvantaged by being shiftworkers. While the NES references shiftworkers in regard to five weeks annual leave, unfortunately the 10 days hasn't kept up with what we as workers do. When I first started at the business, it was three eight-hour shifts. Now it's a 24/7 operation. There are not as many employees, so obviously there are more workers doing more of the work. For 12-hour shiftworkers, it's high-risk work. It's widely known that it has detrimental effects on your health, which are likely to make you more sick. As Jacob was saying, on my particular roster, we rotate between a six and a seven. I can use all my leave in one go. If I do that then, when my family members need me to care for them—I've got ageing parents now—I'm not available to do that. I work with a significant number of workers who have exhausted their sick leave. It's quite common that that happens, and they either come to work sick—I myself am immunocompromised. It puts me at risk and then causes me to miss work as well. If I've got inadequate sick leave, I have to either miss work and receive no pay or come to work sick, which is affecting other people as well. So, with the 12-hour shiftworkers receiving the same entitlements as other workers, it just disadvantages us so much. It's been determined that a notional day is 7.6 hours, but that's just not relevant to us in our industry. The increase in leave would enable workers to take the time they need to recover properly. Also, my family is missing out on time with me when my child needs me as well. People I work with have made no secret of the fact that this is hurting them—for example, the pay that they don't receive. In my job, with my employer, we've been lucky enough to be able to negotiate two extra days, but not everybody is able to do that. That's why the NES needs to be changed to acknowledge an actual 10 full days. With the 6.3 days, it's essentially six days. With what you can do in six days, like I said, it just takes it out in one go. CHAIR: Thank you. Ms Wischer : Thank you, chair and committee. I am here to speak today about the operation of section 87 of the Fair Work Act, which sets out the definition of 'shiftworker' for the purposes of accessing an additional week of annual leave. I'll touch on that definition shortly. In terms of the ANMF, our members are nurses, midwives and carers, many of whom work in organisations such as public and private hospitals, residential aged care, mental health clinics or private hospitals, which operate on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week service in order to provide health and aged care to Australians across the entire country. The majority of our members work in that sort of environment. Our members are close to 90 per cent female. They are likely to work part time and also to be in that demographic of the sandwich generation. In order to facilitate the services of a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week health- or aged-care service, shiftwork is required, meaning that people work on weekends and at night. The issue with the NES definition, which is complicated, is that many of our members, despite knowing themselves to be shiftworkers, do not fall within the definition of 'shiftworker' for the purposes of attracting the additional week of annual leave. This problem is a question that is raised at our branches, I think, as a fairly regular issue of concern. It's a matter that gives rise to dispute. We believe that a simplification and expansion of the definition and how it operates would not only give access to the additional leave for many of our members who have the disutility of irregular and unsociable working hours but also have the benefit of minimising dispute both in the workplace and in negotiations for enterprise agreements. Most of our members access the entitlement to the extra week of annual leave provided for in the NES under the auspices of the Nurses Award or via an enterprise agreement. There are a plethora of ways that that definition then operates within enterprise agreements. Focusing on the Nurses Award, the Nurses Award provides for all nurses, midwives and carers under the award five weeks of annual leave, and shiftworkers can access a sixth week of annual leave under the definition in the award. In the Nurses Award you will be defined as a shiftworker if you work over the seven days of the week and regularly work on weekends. Confusingly, the Nurses Award has a second definition of shiftworker that simply provides that you will be a shiftworker if you are rostered to work ordinary hours outside of the span of hours of a day worker. It is that definition that we see as preferable. That also illustrates the confusion that can arise from that, and I think it is an indicator of how valuable it would be to have a baseline definition of a shiftworker for the purposes of annual leave in the NES. We would say that the additional week of leave is intended to compensate workers for the disutility of working unsociable hours and irregular hours. The result, really, of working nights and working on weekends is that you spend less time with family and you have less ability to participate in social, cultural and recreational activities compared to those who are day workers working a shift pattern across nine to five, Monday to Friday. There are three points that we, the ANMF, would like to make, but there are additional shift arrangements which we would also point to. Firstly, the ANMF considers and submits that the definition of shiftwork should be expanded to include night shift. It is possible that you could work night shift Monday to Friday and not be considered a shiftworker for the purposes of gaining access to the additional week of leave. It is well documented, and I'd be happy to provide on notice some of the research about the impact of doing night shift on health. It's detrimental to cardiovascular health. It increases risks of breast cancer, for example. Our membership, being predominantly female, also tend to access the night shift if they are working in a way that allows them to care for their children in the daytime and also then tend to maybe not work on the weekend as much, meaning that they don't then potentially get access to that additional week, despite the enormous toll on themselves, their family and their ability to recover from periods of working regularly rostered night shifts. Secondly, we wanted to point to one of the problems that we see that's come out of some of the case law. There's the O'Neill v Roy Hill decision, which looks at what 'regularly works over seven days' means—meaning that you have to demonstrate that you have worked over those seven days in order to meet the definition. We have an example at the moment that is currently before the Fair Work Commission where the employer is arguing that, in order to say that you work regularly over seven days, you have to have worked on 29 of each of the days of the week—which, in a rostering sense, is probably nearly impossible to achieve, meaning, really, that it's a way of the employer excluding people from the additional week of leave and manipulating how that is calculated. Thirdly, we really wanted to point to the difficulty with the retrospective calculation of leave. If, for example, you're required to have worked a certain number of weekends, public holidays or Sundays, it's quite common practice for employers to calculate that at the conclusion of a period of time, meaning that it operates retrospectively. We say that's contrary to the NES with respect to how annual leave is calculated, which is progressive and credited pro rata, as you go. We think that is an issue that could well be resolved, and, again, there is some case law around that that we refer to in our submission. Those are the main points I wanted to make. There are other issues with compressed rosters for FIFO workers, for example, that should also be considered, but I'll hand to my colleague now. Thank you. Mr Hoover : I want to expand on what Kristen said in relation to how the definition of a shiftworker affects my members and their access to the additional week of annual leave. We do have a predominantly female workforce, and they often reduce their hours for the purposes of starting a family and then continue at reduced hours or a reduced number of shifts while their children are of school age, and that makes them less likely to fulfil the requirements that enable them to accrue the additional week of annual leave. Likewise, we find that working night shifts during the week does not count towards nurses' extra annual leave entitlement. It is much the same with the dreaded late-early shift. When you finish a late shift and you are rostered to start an early shift the next morning, you have enough time only to go home, sleep and then come back to the hospital. That does not count to the accrual under the current definition, and I would challenge anyone to walk up the street to St Vincent's and try and convince one of the nurses there that they aren't working shiftwork for the purposes of this additional annual leave. There's also a reliance on the employer to keep track of when you've met the threshold, whatever threshold that may be, because it does vary. And there is an incentive for employers to structure rosters in a way that can avoid the entitlement. When the requirements are met to accrue the additional week of annual leave, most payroll systems record it separately. They will record it as additional leave, and this creates a lot of confusion amongst employers and employees about whether additional leave is annual leave, whether leave loading applies and whether you have to take one before the other. There are quite a lot of members who come to me with concerns and confusion about that. Overall, as the entitlement is calculated retrospectively, you don't know whether you are going to meet that threshold or not until it appears in the payroll system on Kronos—if that is accurate and the employer and their payroll staff have been updating their records. The uncertainty about whether you are going to accrue that additional leave or not is a barrier to work-life balance and planning your future periods of annual leave. We have solved one aspect of that in the public sector nurses and midwives EBA in Victoria by workers under that agreement accruing 3.8 hours of annual leave when they work a weekend, up to a maximum of 38 hours for the year. That, however, still relies on weekend work and does not recognise the shiftwork that our nurses and midwives are undertaking, particularly night shifts. CHAIR: Thank you. Ms Fernando, you'll have to leave us shortly, so I will get you to ask the first question for this group. Ms FERNANDO: My question is to the AMWU. Jacob, your submission makes the point that the NES still seems to assume a standard 'Monday to Friday' worker, even though many manufacturing workers are on a 10- or 12-hour shift, with seven on, seven off rosters, permanent nights, weekends and public holidays. In practical terms, how could refining the term 'shiftworker' improve clarity and consistency compared with the current Fair Work Commission's tests, such as the '34 Sundays and six public holidays' approach? Mr Batt : I was here to talk about the sick leave, the personal leave, rather than the shiftworker. I think that question might be better answered by Ben. Ms FERNANDO: Yes, sorry. Mr Moxham : We would say that the current NES definition of 'shiftworker' for the purposes of that additional week of leave is very vague, and it has led to a whole lot of confused decisions from the courts, the commission and employers themselves. I'll quickly take you through it. The test is you have to be continually rostered for 24 hours a day, seven days a week; you have to be regularly rostered to work those shifts; and you have to regularly work on Sunday and public holidays, so there's a lot of wiggle room in that. The Roy Hill case said: 'Well, "regularly" works. We're going to make that 34 Sundays and six public holidays a year.' That means you're rostered on about two-thirds of those days throughout a year. That is a very, very tough test to make. We have the case of the Bega dairy. A worker hit that mark, but they failed another test because the operation was not continuously run. They shut down on a Sunday morning. So the employer could turn off the machines for an hour, and you would lose that week of annual leave. We then have an offshore hydrocarbon worker who is working every single day for 40 per cent of the year or half the year. They're not going to meet that definition. What we're proposing is something very simple and very fair: (1) if you're a night shiftworker, you should get the extra week of leave; (2) if you work the compressed roster, you should get that extra week of leave; and (3) instead of the 34-plus-six test, which is very tough to meet, we've just said, 'If you work half of the available Sundays and public holidays in total, you should get that extra week of leave.' It's much simpler, and I also note that the nurses have an even simpler proposal, which really meets the requirements that Kristen has taken us through as well. Ms FERNANDO: Thank you so much. CHAIR: Ms Lawrence. Ms LAWRENCE: For this question, if we could have everybody address it, it would be more fulsome, I'm sure. I'm happy for you to challenge these stats if I have them wrong, but I have Roy Morgan leave stats. As of late 2025, Australian workers are holding a near record 209 million days of unused leave. This is an average of 14 days annual leave accrued per worker, which adds to more than $7,000 annual leave. But there's also an extraordinary number of people who have got no leave entitlements at all—about five million. I've got a two-part question, which goes a little bit more to the first session than to some of the technical points you're making in relation to shiftworker leave. Firstly, to try to understand what you're seeing as perhaps the reason that workers not only are banking leave but are clearly exhausting sick leave and the examples we're hearing from the workers about burnout and the need to try to have time for themselves, is it a lack of security or culture in the workplace to be able to take the leave? If they're banking leave, is there a concern about the future, so they're just using sick leave entitlements for the more immediate crisis mode? Secondly, be it an additional week of annual leave or more flexibility to the entitlements you're expecting as shiftworkers, what needs to change to ensure workers feel that they can in fact take that available leave as leave for themselves? Ms O'Neil : What we hear varies across multiple industries and sectors, but generally we hear that the issues that were explained to you about rostering and work intensification are the things that are stopping workers from taking leave. They're working in sectors and industries where the demand for availability has become much greater, and so they're finding it harder to get agreement and approval for leave arrangements. In industries and sectors like manufacturing there used to be set close-down periods where people took all their leave at once, but those have become rarer. Many more industries and sectors work across all or the majority of weeks of the year or the weekends et cetera, as you've heard. The expectation of employers about availability of workers impacts workers' sense of being able to take leave. I'd add that current cost-of-living pressures and wages not keeping up with rising costs have affected workers' capacity to take leave, because they're not always able to afford the sorts of holidays and leave arrangements that they might have been able to think about or plan with their families in the past. Also, as you rightly said, larger and larger proportions of workers are in jobs which do not accrue any leave entitlement at all because they're treated as casual. They're in insecure work. They get no paid leave. So you've got this mixture of people having no paid leave and people in jobs with paid leave but with work demands or costs that stop them taking it. Also, people are fearful, saying, 'How long will my permanent job last?' Job insecurity also means people keep it in the bank, because they think: 'If I lose my job, I'll at least get paid out my annual leave entitlements.' Even though it's meant to be a recovery from work and meant to be good for your balance of work and life, people bank it because they're worried about their future in industries and sectors that are under pressure. Mr Batt : Also, with uncertainty about whether there is or is not going to be a shutdown period for people to take their leave, what you will find is that workers will bank that leave because they don't want to get to the two weeks or four weeks shutdown at Christmas—you're in a situation of: 'If I do not have enough leave to cover me for that period, how am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to pay all of that?' That's why, in some of the businesses that we represent in the manufacturing sector, you may see that. There are abilities for employers to speak to employees about those sorts of leave entitlements, but we're finding that it's the uncertainty of workers not knowing if that shutdown is going to come. Therefore, they're hesitant to take that leave, because they'll end up without any income at all come Christmas time when they've got to pay the bills and they're stood down. Ms LAWRENCE: The second part of my question is: What would need to change within the corporate culture to give people the sense that they can take their annual leave to avoid burnout, to avoid getting unwell and, most importantly, to ensure they have that balance with life and work? What would need to change, if additional leave entitlements were to become available, so that that didn't also just then get accrued? What would need to change? Ms O'Neil : One example—and this does vary—is that if there's a fundamental understanding about the value of workers recovering from work and having a life outside of work and if that's part of the culture of the particular organisation, sector, industry or company that you work for, then there's an encouragement for people to be able to take leave and for working flexibly with workers about scheduling leave in a way that works for their lives. These are companies that think about the difference between workers that have children on school holidays and those that don't and try to accommodate the differences in terms of people's lives. The closer you work with workers and their unions to make fair and flexible leave arrangements that work for people, the better the culture is. It's a general understanding about the great value of being able to have a life, which means that when you are at work you can fully contribute. Ms LE: I'm very interested in manufacturing. Manufacturing is one of the biggest employers in my electorate, and I have spoken to manufacturing businesses whose challenge is actually to keep the manufacturing business running. There's a question of which part of the manufacturing sector you're working in and how confident you feel that there is job security where you're working. I spoke with somebody in steel fabrication a few days ago who has reduced their staff from 60 to now just 20, and there are uncertainties about maintaining the other employees still there. Mr Batt : Yes. I mean, Tony worked in food manufacturing. In food manufacturing there's certainly some really strong security. I think we all enjoy chocolate—I certainly do—so I'd say to everyone: 'Go and buy some Cadbury chocolate. It's fantastic and it's union made!' Ms LE: I've got good chocolate factory, Hugos Chocolate, in my electorate. Mr Batt : Hugos Chocolate? I'll have to go and try that next. Certainly, we're always advocating, in the food area, around looking at imports. We had some more food manufacturing businesses in Tasmania. McCain used to have a vegetable processing plant in Smithton. Simplot used to have vegetable processing in Scottsdale. So they were in regional areas. Once those regional jobs go, it's very difficult to find some more, so it's really important to support manufacturing. We also need to look at what the government can do around not only the imports but around dumping as well. We need to be looking at the anti-dumping aspect as well within manufacturing, around fabrication and those sorts of industries. Ms LE: I think what was suggested to me was quotas and tariffs for people importing, in particular, steel fabrication, because that is killing the steel fabrication industry. I'd love to hear, offline, what you guys are doing around that fact, because it's really critical to the job opportunities here for Australians. Ms O'Neil : We can definitely arrange that! And thanks so much for your support around manufacturing. It's great to hear. Mr Robertson : One thing that worries us all, moving forward, is automation. That's one thing which is happening everywhere. We've started implementing some of that stuff in my workplace, and with that obviously comes the uncertainty of job security. That is something that is in the back of people's minds. Businesses want to become more efficient and productive. So that's one thing that people certainly are concerned about seeing. Also, with the leave—just to your point before—my workplace does have shutdowns at different times of the year. At times, we find that we don't have enough leave to cover the shutdowns that they want to have for the year, which doesn't give us any time for our families when we want to take it. If my daughter—or someone else's daughter, their children—is on school holidays, I can't take leave because I don't know what my company, my employer, is doing at a certain time. They could spring a shutdown at Easter—you need two weeks. Here's Christmas—four weeks. People hang on to their leave for that reason, because there's the uncertainty. We could get some sort of better structure in place so that people know exactly what is happening—if there is likely to be a shutdown. People shouldn't have to use all their leave when an employer wants them to. That leave should be for you to take to have some time, at least, with your family as well. CHAIR: Thank you very much for that. There's a lot there, and I think we might have a look at some of the research that was referenced as well. Thank you so much. Mr Moxham : Chair—just while we're swapping over—Gerard Dwyer from the SDA wanted to table a couple of documents, which I thought I'd do in the break. Firstly, there's a survey of members that they've done, which was about: 'What would five weeks of annual leave mean to you?' Secondly, there are some testimonies, qualitative statements, about the lived impact of limited annual leave on health, family life and wellbeing. So I'll just table those, and we'll also email them through. CHAIR: Excellent. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Mr McDonald, do you have a short opening statement? Mr McDonald : Yes. I'm here to talk on four areas: the ordinary customary turnover of labour redundancy exception, leave accrual on workers compensation and during protected industrial action, and the redundancy entitlement drop-off after 10 years of service. The ordinary and customary turnover for labour exemption for redundancies is a matter that has been thoroughly and quite repeatedly tested in the courts, and there are now quite explicit provisions as to when it should apply. Despite this, we continue to see employers in contract industries attempt to use the exemption to escape redundancy entitlements, both by structuring contracts with employees in an attempt to avoid redundancy and by relying upon the exemption in circumstances where it would not actually reasonably apply. Far too often a union encounters circumstances where a contract change occurs, the employer attempts to rely upon the exemption, often in cases of longstanding contracts, and the union must intervene to help members obtain their redundancy entitlements. This process of recovering entitlements, at its best, can take months. For example, last year a group of security officers were made redundant under a contract that had been going on for many years, and the employer attempted to rely upon the exemption. Eventually they were able to agree to get their entitlements paid. They were made redundant in August 2025, and their entitlement was paid out in January this year. That is one of the best-case scenarios in terms of timelines. At its worst, it takes years, and there is costly and complicated litigation. Even in circumstances where redundancies are clearly payable, this is an issue that still arises. This is particularly egregious because contract changes mostly occur in some of the lowest-paid industries, where the majority of employees are covered by the award, such as cleaning and security. For these people, the redundancy entitlement is essential to their and their family's quality of life when they're trying to find a new job. At a minimum, if they have to wait a couple of months, that means it's a very hard couple of months. It can be detrimental if they have to wait years or if they don't know if they'll win the entitlement, or, if they do win eventually, they don't know how long it will take to actually be paid by the employer. Essentially, if you have an entitlement, you just have to pretend it's not there, because it's going to take years to get it. Turning to leave accrual, employees who are on WorkCover are subject to different rules regarding accruing entitlements depending upon which state they are in and, in some states, depending on what kind of area they are employed in. Are they employed under Commonwealth laws? Are they employed under state laws? If they're employed in a territory, it could be different. Working out when leave will accrue if you are on worker's compensation is incredibly complicated and is incredibly confusing. It is not something that people can easily understand. The creation of a national standard is something that fits with the purpose of the NES so that people can know simply what they're entitled to and don't lose out when they're off work because they have been injured at work. Turning to industrial action, employees who are taking industrial action are already subject to a penalty. They are not getting paid when they are taking industrial action, and, under the NES as it stands, they do not accrue entitlements, because the industrial action does not count as service. This also occurs when an employee has been locked out by their employer. They're not choosing to take industrial action. The employer has chosen to lock them out, so they're subject to two detriments while they try to reach an enterprise agreement with their employer—often for some increases to minimum standards. Lastly, turning to the redundancy pay drop-off after 10 years of service, this drop-off is unfair. An employee who has nine years of service under the NES is entitled to more redundancy pay than an employee with 10 years of service. This exemption was unclear and didn't quite make sense when it came into effect under the NES. Long-service leave is under state systems. Many of those state laws have changed, and in most states now you get pro rata long-service leave or can take long-service leave at seven years. Even at the time of the modern award process, many people lost out and had lower redundancy entitlements than they had under the pre-modern award system. This drop-off isn't fair, and it's pretty simple to say that longer service should mean you have a higher entitlement. The fact that, if you have a couple of days shy of 10 years service when you're made redundant, you get more than if it happens a couple of days later is quite frankly a bit ridiculous. Thank you. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Hilakari : Thank you to the chair of the committee for having us. I understand we're pushed for time, so I'll move fast. With me is Angus, who was an apprentice in his time, and he'll talk about some of the problems of obtaining a medical certificate. I'll throw to him after I give a bit of context. So here's the problem. We spend $500 million in taxpayer dollars each year to fill out industrial paperwork via GPs and pharmacists in the form of a medical certificate. There are four groups that hate this—completely hate it. I'll start with GPs. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners have come out on multiple occasions and said they do not want to fill out this paperwork. They are already too full in their waiting rooms. You will know from your constituents how difficult it is to get a GP appointment. One in 10 of these appointments is taken up by a worker seeking a medical certificate. What that looks like in Australia is 34,000 appointments each day for someone wanting a medical certificate. The GPs do not want these people in their rooms for the other obvious reason. Most of these people are presenting with a couple of things: the flu, gastro, a cold or a diagnosed issue that they know how to self-manage—but they need the certificate. GPs do not want to expose themselves or their patients to gastro or to the common cold. These are people presenting with a real problem that needs a fix. They don't want another problem put on top of it. The next group that is concerned about this is pharmacists. Pharmacists, as you know, are super busy filling out scripts. If you go into a pharmacist's office these days, you'll see a little sign there that says, 'We only fill out medical certificates between this time and this time,' because it's just too much of a burden on them. My conversations with the Pharmacy Guild, especially here in Victoria—they are extremely frustrated. This is an unfair burden on their business. The next group that we represent, and care most about, is workers. There is a gap fee when you go to a GP. The average gap fee in Australia is about 44 bucks. For me to get that certificate, I have to fork out $44 to see my GP if I can get in, and getting in is tricky. We think this is an unnecessary burden on working people to say that they are sick. The fourth group that have a stake in this is employers. We spoke to the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry about this under their previous leadership. This is not their number one issue. But, if this is something that could fix Australia for the better, they're up for this challenge. We got into a tight negotiation with them about it. They said, 'Look, for any more than three days, we have some concerns.' I think that's probably about right. What we're saying is that, for two days or less, you should not need to provide a certificate. This is probably one of the simplest things that we could fix. If you're looking for a productivity measure—we only have to change six words in the act to get this right. It will make a massive difference for a number of reasons. When I present to that GP, Medicare pays a fee to that GP, and that's about $34.90. That's where you get over $500 million a year going out the door. That is a misuse of taxpayers' money. I think the advantage we get, pretty simply, is that we free up 34,000 appointments a day for GPs that we don't have enough of already. Workers save $44 a visit. The government saves $500 million to the budget. Treasury must feel pretty good about that type of number. It relieves a burden for pharmacists that don't want to do it. It reduces communicable diseases in our community. Frankly, a number of these people who cannot get that GP appointment present elsewhere in our health system. They're either calling an ambo, going to an urgent care clinic or presenting at emergency departments. It's a relief for the health system overall. This is a very simple productivity measure. I'm not sure why we haven't got there yet, but this is the group of people that can help us achieve it. Angus, do you want to talk about your experience? Mr Leech : Absolutely. Good morning, committee members. Thank you for your time and the opportunity to speak today. I'm representing young workers today. I'm a former apprentice boilermaker, and I've seen firsthand the many barriers that young people face when entering the workforce. I'd like to share one of those barriers with you today. A while ago, I needed to take time off work for my father, who was unwell. It was a genuine situation. My employer told me that I needed a carer's leave certificate as proof first. For context, I was only 19 years old and still learning about my workplace rights. Instead of focusing on helping my dad, I found myself worrying. I thought, 'Am I going to get in trouble for not having a sick leave certificate?' While trying to care for someone who was sick, I was also expected to organise a medical appointment to justify my own entitlement. That meant time and money for something that didn't actually help the person that was unwell. It also meant taking up a GP appointment that could have gone to someone who genuinely needed the care, and for what? It wasn't for treatment; it was just for proof. In the end, it all became too difficult. Instead of using what the leave was designed for, I had to step away and go into work. Luckily, I was able to contact my brother and ask him to take over the caring duties. That's a problem because not everyone has a backup plan. The system didn't support me to be a young carer, and it actually made it harder for me to be one. Under the National Employment Standards, personal and carer's leave is meant to let workers respond to illness without unnecessary difficulty. But, in practice, it often feels conditional, like you're trying to justify yourself even when you're already dealing with an illness or caring duties. That matters for young workers. It's not just about inconvenience; it's about added cost, wasted time and unnecessary pressure that's already put on a very stretched healthcare system. Let's remove unnecessary barriers and create a system where people can access their entitlements with dignity, trust and fairness. Thank you for your time. CHAIR: Thank you. I have a couple of questions. I will start with one and then we'll see how we go, so we can share it around. Mr McDonald, your submission and the evidence you've given today go to a few issues where there are obviously some inconsistencies. I'm also wondering about how some of the areas you've raised might connect in another area. For instance, you've given the example of contract workers and the question of how we calculate long-service leave and redundancies. When people are on contract, how does that accrual work for the purposes of redundancy and long-service leave? Mr McDonald : For the vast majority of contract workers, they won't see long-service leave under the current framework, unless they fall under one of the very few portable schemes. Some people that I've dealt with have been at worksites for 30 to 40 years and they have gone through dozens of contract changes and they won't see long-service leave. This also affects whether they're entitled to redundancies. Some of them have been through many small redundancies; some of them have just had the same job over and over again with a changing employer. This affects their abilities in their day-to-day lives as well. If they have to start accruing personal leave and annual leave every couple of years then they don't get to take holidays, they don't get to take care of their kids. CHAIR: So they could be working, essentially, in the same workplace for a decade or so but with different employers and so they wouldn't be entitled to that redundancy—is that right? Mr McDonald : Correct. Ms LAWRENCE: Your submission is really sound and clear in what you're suggesting for changes for the NES. In the context of futureproofing it, with the rapid uptake of AI and, potentially, the risk of redundancies, do you or your affiliated members have any other safeguards that you would like to see introduced that go beyond what you're suggesting around the protections of leave entitlements for workers? Mr McDonald : Our union and a lot of the other unions have based their submissions around the impact of AI and changes in redundancies, especially around consultation. We want to make consultation one of the things that has to be required and making sure that maximising the impact that AI has a positive benefit and is not just a cost-cutting measure. We want to ask how can it improve people's lives? Ms O'Neil : I just want to add to the point about consultation. Currently, the way it works is you're required to consult once a definite decision has been made, which is going to impact people's work. We think it's essential that consultation about AI is built in prior to definite decisions that are going to impact on workers and their work. This is a really important point. As we said earlier, it is something that is changing fast. What we know from studies globally is that if you put workers at the centre of that change, if it's something that they are involved in shaping instead of something that happens to them, then you actually get much better results anyway. So building workers in before final decisions are made about the use of artificial intelligence—how it will impact their work; what are the arrangements in place for skills training, transition, support; what are the alternatives or what if there are important additional safeguards that need to be put in place—are critical to this change. So, yes, we think it is important that decisions aren't made and then workers told, but that workers are involved in the design and change in a way that safeguards their jobs, their skills and their futures. There are also things like their privacy and safeguards against discrimination, which is another big concern for workers—not just who gets employed but promotion opportunities and other approaches that are increasingly using artificial intelligence. There are also things like the surveillance of workers, which AI is enabling to happen in a more extensive way that really invades workers' privacy, and issues with how to protect their information and data. And, of course, large language models are using AI to steal workers' work without paying for it. So, if you're a creative worker or an academic, there are many industries and sectors now where AI is enabling what you create as a worker to be used without you receiving payment for the work you've created. They're some of the key issues, but we could probably have a more extensive and lengthy discussion. Do you want to add anything? Ms LAWRENCE: I want to tease this out just a little bit further around the decision-making. We heard this morning that platforms are using AI to deactivate accounts, for example, for gig workers, so that there's no human intervention in that decision. The question we were framing was: can an AI decision be deemed reasonable in the context of a worker's termination of employment? Does the NES capture the decision-making tools that can be used by AI in this context? Is there something else there that will affect redundancies and all the things we've been talking about this morning? Mr Moxham : That example around gig workers and termination is absolutely a red-hot issue. Some of the recent reforms, particularly those led by the Transport Workers' Union, have introduced the unfair deactivation rules, which cover gig workers in particular. The worker has the right to request a human to actually review the decision to make sure it's fair, just and reasonable in the circumstances. That's been rolled out for about 12 months. There have been hundreds of cases. It's fair to say that Uber and those sorts of platforms are learning very quickly that that sort of algorithm management around work performance is failing and that they really have to lift their performance. But this is an area that is evolving so rapidly that it's not just gig workers; it's potentially going much broader across the labour market, from rostering to performance management to termination. That's something we're keeping a very close eye on and know that further reforms will be needed. Ms LE: Angus, we have carer's leave. Would you have qualified for carer's leave? Was carer's leave around when you were 19? If you couldn't get a doctor's certification, could you have taken carer's leave? Mr Leech : That was carer's leave that I was trying to attain that day, and that also does have the request of attaining a medical leave certificate. CHAIR: If it's a question of reasonable evidence, then the argument here is that we have a clearer understanding of what that reasonable evidence would be. Is that correct? Mr Hilakari : Yes, that's at the heart of it. When an employer says, 'I'm sick,' what are their duties? There's evidence described in the act, and in some awards you see it appear and maybe in some EBAs it's negotiated, but broadly, it's a company policy. In the vast majority of workplaces, that's what it is. We think we should bring clarity to that. So that unnecessary burden not just on workers having to pay money out but also on our health system at this point we think is actually a little bit of a nonsense. If you are genuinely sick, I think employers have a reasonable point to make, that, if it's more than two days and you're sick for three or four days, they would want to know. We're good with that. But if it's just for a one-day or two-day absence, I think we are wasting a hell of a lot of money for a hell of a lot of paperwork that results in just a burden and not a benefit for this country. CHAIR: Remembering, too, that leave is actually an entitlement that people can take. Mr Hilakari : Yes, it's a legal entitlement that they can take. Mr Moxham : There are 10 personal/carer's leave days in the NES, so you can use them if you are unfit or unwell or if someone you care for is unfit or unwell. As Luke said, the test at the moment is 'evidence that would satisfy a reasonable person'. Unfortunately, in an enterprise agreement, an employer has the right to specify what that means, and that's where workplace policies become really quite strict. An additional ask is that, if you're going to do that in an enterprise agreement, it shouldn't leave a worker worse off, particularly in those scenarios that Luke talks about where you're sick for three or four days. Another ask is that you should be able to have an enduring form of evidence. If you've got a long-term condition, you shouldn't have to go to the doctor every time; you should get that one letter and that should be acceptable. We think the NES should include that as well. Ms LE: Does the policy currently allow for that, like for carers leave? What would you need to do to adjust that, to make it more specific? Mr Hilakari : You can clarify it in the act, but at this point it's largely individual policies in workplaces. You go one workplace and it's something. You go to the next workplace and it's something different. You go to Maccas and it's something different again. That's the problem, especially if you have a diagnosed issue that you can self-manage. One certificate to the employer to clarify that ought to be enough. Ms O'Neil : That's why we think it's important that the NES provides a simple clarification of it, because it varies so dramatically. It seems like common sense. As someone who has suffered from endometriosis her whole working life, the notion that you would need to go back multiple times to get a certificate for something that was diagnosed and well-known to cause an impact on your life—it just makes no sense, as Luke has taken us through, and that's why we want to link it to the NES, to get some clarity. CHAIR: Thank you. I just want to return to your evidence on the question I asked earlier. The NES is obviously about a universal safety net for all workers. It seems there is a cohort that is excluded from accessing some entitlements, like redundancy, given those contract arrangements. What will help ensure that they are able to access the redundancy provisions that I think the NES intended for people to be able to access if there are those circumstances that you describe? Mr McDonald : One of the primary things would be the removal of the ordinary and customary turnover of labour exclusion. That is probably the most common fight we have about redundancies, even though it has gone up and down through every possible court. What we see is that every time we win, employers try to rewrite new contracts to get away from it, and then you have to challenge that one. CHAIR: So they are using that as a way to justify a new contract which effectively erases the service? Mr McDonald : They attempt to, yes, and they have been successful in some cases. CHAIR: Okay. Ms LAWRENCE: You were talking about redundancies on the back of a company going bankrupt. Do you have a view on whether the Fair Entitlements Guarantee should be extended towards people on temporary visas, for example? Do you have a threshold by which you think that should be applied to workers? Ms O'Neil : A worker is a worker. If you're working in this country and paying tax in this country, you should be entitled to the protections that are available to workers, which would include the Fair Entitlements Guarantee. Ms LAWRENCE: It just goes to your universality question, where there seems to be carve-outs. Ms O'Neil : Yes. CHAIR: As there are no further questions coming through from those who are joining us remotely, I thank all of the witnesses here for their attendance. We will send you a copy of the transcript and you may request any required corrections. I believe, as well, there is some evidence that we will follow up with witnesses today. We are very grateful for your time here today. Proceedings suspended from 12:53 to 14:05 .