Employees will be able to refuse overtime work to look after family responsibilities, based on a decision handed down today by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
The reasonable hours test case brought forward by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was partially granted test-case status, with the right of employees to refuse overtime awarded test-case standard.
The full decision is available
here.
The ACTU was seeking to include a standard reasonable hours clause into federal awards.
"In our view, it is appropriate to award a test-case standard which will confer a right on an employee to refuse to work overtime where the working of such overtime would result in the employee working unreasonable hours," the Full Bench decision states.
"It will permit the employee's ordinary hours to be taken into account in deciding whether overtime is unreasonable, but the right of refusal it confers will only operate in relation to overtime."
Under the decision, employees may refuse to work overtime on the basis of:
- any risk to employee health and safety
- the employee's personal circumstances, including any family responsibilities
- the needs of the workplace or enterprise
- the notice (if any) given by the employer of the overtime and by the employee of his or her intention to refuse it
- any other relevant matter.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow welcomed the decision in its limited form, saying it will give workers rights to balance work and family life.
"Employees can no longer be forced against their will to work unreasonable hours," she says.
"The Full Bench has recognised the critical need to address the continuing rise in working time in Australia, which has some of the longest and fastest-growing hours of work in the developed world."
The AIRC also rejected an Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry claim to vary two awards to include an overtime register to record overtime preferences as well as a provision to allow annual leave to be taken in single days.
The claim also sought an annualised wage rate based on an average of one hour of overtime a week.