Employment and Migration Blog

I was recently asked to comment on an article for "In the Black" magazine (a CPA publication) on 'what makes a successful redundancy' - and I thought I'd share a snippet of what I said...

Pay rates All award rates increased 2.9% as of 1 July. So if you pay at or close to award rates, or pay at an annual rate which is not far above award rates but which is intended to include all obligations, then it is a good idea to check the rates you pay against the revised pay rates in the award to make sure you comply, both with base rate and with the total due including overtime etc.    If you need assistance doing this “IR health check”, please give us a call.

Beware the consultation and redeployment issues when making employees redundant. For a redundancy to be outside the unfair dismissal regime, it has to be a "genuine redundancy." Whether a redundancy is genuine depends on whether there is consultation as required by an applicable award, and whether any reasonable options for redeployment are offered to the employee.

Continuing on last week’s theme that “Redundancy is not a panacea”, I saw a decision last week, made particularly interested by the ATO’s involvement both as employer and taxman, so that the A to the Q above could be “When the ATO says so.” An ATO employee negotiated a voluntary redundancy then asked the ATO to treat it as a “genuine redundancy” to get the tax breaks involved. The ATO refused. She went to the AAT to argue the issue, the ATO opposed it, and she lost.