Modern Awards: Ensuring Minimum Entitlements for Employees

Employment
Relations
Running Head: EMPLOYMNET RELATIONS 0
Student’s Name

EMPLOYMNET RELATIONS 1
A modern award refers to a document which includes minimum conditions related to
employment of an employee, that too on top of the National Employment Standards. This is a
new concept in the area of employment which came into effect from 01st January 2010. As
mentioned above, such awards consist of provisions and minimum terms and conditions
regarding many of the factors such as wages/pay, allowance, breaks, overtime, penalty rates,
rosters and hours of work (Fairwork.gov.au, 2019). As all these factors are very significant for
employer as well as employee, the subjective awards play a very crucial role in the management
of employment relations. Modern awards are applicable to every employee that are covered
under the national workplace relations system. For different industries, different awards are
there. The lead motive behind the development of these awards is to provide a minimum safety
net to all the employees of the national system. Currently, 122 awards are there in the countries
which are developed and applied to different industry. Employers may also developed their
enterprise agreement/ registered agreement with their employees. Here this is also required to
mention that if there is registered agreement developed between employer and employee, such
awards are not applicable if that registered agreement provides a better situation to employees.
In order to check the reason of the development and existence of modern awards, this is
to state that total 10 national employment standards (NES) are there under the fair work Act
2009 (Cth). No employer of Australia can offer less favourable treatment to his/her employees
than the required one under NES or federal minimum wages. Nevertheless, NES and federal
minimum wages do not provide a complete picture always. For instance, NES provides that a
full-time employee can work for 38 hours a week but do not provide other elements such as
timing, meal breaks, and penalties and so on. To cover all these aspects, modern awards were

EMPLOYMNET RELATIONS 2
required to be developed (Hrassured.com.au, 2019). These awards ensure additional minimum
entitlements of employees that NES and federal minimum wages do not cover (Stewart, 2018).
It is also necessary to understand how these awards originated in Australia. This is to say
that the Rudd Government, following its elections in 2007, directed the Australian Industrial
Relations Commission to review the existing awards. Further, the government also directed the
commission to create a new set of awards if required. The process of award modernisation began
in the month of March 2008. As directed, commissions reviewed approximately 1500 awards
and the same has developed 122 modern awards. These awards came into effect from 01st
January 2010 (Actu.org.au, 2019). The contents of modern awards have been taken from various
states and territory awards. In the process of review of existing awards and development of new
awards, unions were involved. It was the belief of unions that these awards would provide better
conditions to employees that have proven correct. In many of the cases, the review of awards has
resulted in the favor of employees. In this manner, modernisation of awards has been taken place
in Australia.
Employee-employer relations are really important to be healthy for better outcomes out
of a job. Industrial disputes are the situation where the interest of employer and employee
conflicts with each other. When the employer does not fulfill the demands of the employee, the
later party often feel stress and demotivation. It affects their performance and creates their
conflicts with the employer. Modern awards play an important role here. As mentioned above
these awards provides minimum guaranteed entitlements to employees. Employers have to
provide these entitlements to employees which reduce dissatisfaction in employees. These
awards remove the main reason for disputes and develop a healthy relationship between the
parties of employment relations. In conjunction with this, these awards also have different aspect