IRHR2010: Advising VES on Enterprise Agreements, Semester 1, 2018

This report provides strategic advice to the CEO of Very Excellent Supermarkets (VES) on transitioning from the General Retail Industry Award to an Enterprise Agreement (EA). It outlines the legal obligations VES must meet for Fair Work Commission approval, including employee consultation ...Read More

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 1
INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
Student (name)
Professor (name)
College
Course
Date

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 2
The Executive summary
As a new employee of the Very Excellent Supermarket (VES), my boss, Heather required
advise her about adopting the Enterprise agreement and shifting from the General Retail Industry
Reward. Heather wanted me to access the legal requirements that she should fulfill so that the
Fair Work Commission would agree to approve the EA and the steps that she should follow in
negotiating for the EA. I gathered all the legal requirements that the CEO needed to fulfill before
implementing the EA. I discovered that the CEO should first consult the agreement with her
employees and submit her proposal and other related legal documents to the Fair Work
Commission to ensure that the full implementation and approval of the EA. I concluded that the
Enterprise agreement was beneficial to both the business and its employees. I recommended
Heather to find further improvement strategies of the Enterprise agreement.
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Legal obligations the CEO of the VES supermarkets should accomplish to guarantee the EA’s
approval by the Fair Work Commission..........................................................................................4
What the employees need to understand if they are to comply with the collective agreement
making..........................................................................................................................................6
Legal constraints and opportunities that the employees have......................................................6
The details of my recommendations............................................................................................7
The risks and potential benefits of each recommendation...........................................................7
How should Heather approach the negotiation of the EA?.............................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Recommendation...........................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 4
Introduction
Heather is the CEO of the Very Excellent Supermarket (VES) chain in Australia which is
owned by a large, well-established German company. Heather wants to want to shift from using
the General Retail Industry Reward to a new Enterprise Agreement which will cover all her
current and future employees (Stewart 2018). The most fundamental goals of turning to the EA
are: Firstly, she wants the flexibility of working the whole week without any restriction. The
General Retail Award provide any regulation to the working schedule, and the CEO does not
want this anymore (Knox 2016). Secondly, Heather is happy to pay the award wages, but she
wants to eliminate penalties rates for weekends. Finally, Heather wants to make sure that the
employees are fully engaged in the business, but she does not mind whether this means working
with the union or through the non-union mechanism. I am a new graduate, and the VES has
recently employed me as the Human Resource Officer (Bailey et al. 2015). My CEO, Heather
has requested me to prepare a report advising her how she can accomplish her objectives within
the least time possible and with minimal industrial conflicts (Mortimer 2015). Heather also wants
me to find out the legal requirements that the VES should meet to make sure that the Fair Work
Commission approves the EA and how best she should approach the EA for negotiation.
Legal obligations the CEO of the VES supermarkets should accomplish to guarantee the
EA’s approval by the Fair Work Commission.
The CEO must follow some rules to ensure that the Fair Work Commission adopts the
Enterprise Agreement. The Fair Work Commission demands that Heather should first negotiate
with her employees if they would embrace the shifting of General Retail Industry award to
Enterprise Agreement (Power 2017). The Australian law requires that the CEO of VES should
negotiate an agreement with her employees before the Fair Work Commission can approve

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 5
Enterprise Agreement (James &Ombudsman). The CEO must follow the following steps in
negotiating a deal with her employees.
The CEO must discuss the agreements the agreement with her employees. Heather may
appoint some employees to represent other employees or give the employees the chance to vote
for their representatives. The CEO should authorize these representatives to collect the opinions
of other employees concerning the agreement to the EA (Roberts 2016). After this, the CEO
should then hold a meeting with these representatives. The CEO must give the feedback before
the agreement process as per the discussions of the representatives. The CEO must provide the
logic of the agreement and explain why she wants to implement the Enterprise Agreement. The
CEO must set the goals of implementing the EA and give them the priority before settling the
agreement. The CEO should understand the opinions of their employees and consider their views
(Stewart, 2018). Heather should include the needs of the Very Excellent Supermarket (VES)in
the agreement; she should also give her employees the chance to explain their plans, objectives,
and ambitions and explain how the management would help them accomplish them. The CEO
and the employees should agree to the same objectives, aspirations, purpose, and ambitions even
though their strategies of accomplishing them may differ. If the employees reject the new
proposal, the CEO should find other ways of influencing the employees to accept her proposal
(Mortimer & Ingersoll, 2015). The employees' acceptance of the project is significant because
the Australian laws clearly explain that the Enterprise Agreement will not be implemented if the
employees are against it (Smith 2016). As a result, the CEO should find other ways of
anticipating her employees to accept the proposition. Finally, both the CEO and the employees
must negotiate on all the matters that are in disagreement. The implementation of the EA
requires that all the current disputes should be solved before implementing. This is because EA's

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 6
implementation involves the practice of new laws and regulations (Sutherland, 2016). It also
means a change of the supermarket's daily working activities.
Once Heather has taken all these steps of negotiating an agreement with her employees, she
should then provide written evidence of her employees' agreement to her proposal, and submit it
to the Fair Work Commission. The Commissions examines all the necessary documents and
determines if the employer's desire to implement the EA is selfish or not. If the desire is selfish,
the commission disregards the request (Price et al., 2014). The commissions also check for any
sign of forged document, or if the employer decided to implement the EA without the consent of
the employees, and if so, the commission will disregard the request and deny the business the
rights to shift to the EA from other General Retail Industry Reward. If the Fair Work
Commission verifies all the steps of implementing the Enterprise Agreement, the Commission
will then approve
What the employees need to understand if they are to comply with the collective agreement
making
The employees need to understand the restrictions and requirements of their employment.
The employees' terms and conditions change after the change in the awarding method (Clarke &
Fitzgerald, 2016). The workers need to understand that their favors, benefits, and constraints also
vary. Some benefits like the annual leaves, free weekends and other benefits change and they
will no longer receive these benefits (Tarhini et al., 2015).
Legal constraints and opportunities that the employees have
Some of the legal restrictions resulting from the change in the awarding systems affecting
the employees are: The employees will be excluded from some favors such as exemptions from
working on weekends and public holidays (Smith, 2016). The change would also mean that the

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 7
employees no longer have rights to lunch breaks, annual leaves, allowances, and payments based
on the incentives. The new agreement would mean excluding the employees of all their
conferred minimum wages, the industrial and provisional industrial equipment which would
benefit the employees. The employees should do all their duties as well as other obligations that
the employee may assign to them. Some of the opportunity that the employees would have to
result from the change in the awarding system to EA would be increased income resulting from
extra working (Agreement, 2015). When the employees are obliged to work even during
weekends and public holidays, the sales of the supermarket will increase leading to higher
earnings if the employees are paid on commission.
The details of my recommendations
I would recommend the CEO of the VES supermarket to consider giving her employees
some grants such as annual leaves, and in certain circumstances, exempt them from working on
weekends and public holidays.
I would also encourage Heather to continue giving her employees some allowances and
conferred minimum wages and convections. Heather should also consider calling a timely
meeting with her employees to discuss new strategies for accomplishing the business' ambitions
and discuss the effect of the new enterprise agreement on their operations and motivation.
Heather should authorize her employees to collect feedback from their customers about the
change in the supermarket’s operations and services after the implementation of the EA.
The risks and potential benefits of each recommendation
I have provided the risks and the benefits associated with my suggestions above. Giving her
employers annual leaves would cost the business regarding labor because Heather will be forced
to hire temporary staffs to replace the ones on leave. But on the other hand, this step will help the

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 8
employees appreciate the efforts of the business is looking after their needs as well. Exempting
the workers from working on some weekends and public holidays would also cost the
supermarket regarding labor. But on the other hand, it helps improve the quality of work the
employees provide because they rest their minds a while from the business’ operations.
My request to Ether to consider to continue giving allowances to its customers and conferred
minimum wages to their customers was necessary for that; these allowances would motivate the
employees to work harder and provide more quality services to their customers. These risks that
would result from this recommendation was more labor expenses on the business (Roberts,
2017).
Calling a timely meeting every year was essential for the VES' supermarket because the
CEO and her employees had a chance to discuss and discover better ways of accomplishing its
objectives. The meeting would also enable the CEO to understand the effect of the EA
establishment on the employees. The discussions from the conference would help the CEO to
decide whether she should do away with the Enterprise Agreement if it has adverse effects on the
business (Agreement et al. 2015).
The information that Heather collects from her employees about the customers’ feedback
about the quality of services is important because it helps the CEO compare the quality of
services offered before and after the implementation of the Enterprise Agreement. The step will
help the CEO of VES determine whether the implementation of the EA has been beneficial to the
business or not (James & Ombudsman, 2015). If EA’s implementation has yielded a significant
result, the CEO should consider promoting it, and if its implementation has resulted in adverse
effects, the CEO should consider disregarding it. All these feedbacks are crucial in helping the
CEO make informed decisions on strategizing the business' goals.

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 9
How should Heather approach the negotiation of the EA?
After ensuring that she has fulfilled all the legal requirements, Heather can now start
negotiating about the Enterprise Agreements. Heather should approach the negotiations of the
Enterprise Agreement by determining the parties that will be involved, the duration that the
agreement will be operational, operations that the business will carry out during the agreement
period, the employees’ and the business’ aspiration, and the obligations of the employees
concerning the agreement (Roberts 2016). Heather should influence her employees to embrace
the Enterprise Agreement by showing them its benefits to them and their customers. She should
call the employers' representatives and work out with them on impacting the idea of EA's
implementation to them. Both the representative and the CEO should work together and use
different case studies to show other employees the importance of implanting the EA (Clarke &
Fitzgerald 2016). After negotiating with her employers, Heather should then submit all the legal
documents concerning the implementation of EA to the Fair Works Commission. Heather should
ensure that she fulfills all the legal requirements to provide that the Fair Works Commission
approves the application of EA. Heather should collect a license from the authority after the full
implementation of the EA (Buckley & Casson, 2016).
Conclusion
Finally, from my findings, I have realized that the implementation of the Enterprise will
have a significant impact not only on the employees’ side of view but also on the profitability of
the business and the quality of services delivered to the customers. I have also realized that the
overall importance of the EA implementation on the supermarket is flexibility in the business'
operations, the Best value of services offered, and a more flexible business environment. All
these advantages will promote the profitability of the supermarket in the long-run.

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Recommendation
I would recommend the CEO of VES to improve the employment benefits of her
employees despite the implementation of the Enterprise Agreement. I would request Heather to
ensure that she has fulfilled all the legal obligations concerning the EO (Bailey et al. 2015). I
would also encourage Heather to explore more improvement strategies of the implemented
agreement and implement regulations that would benefit not only the employees and the business
but also their customers.

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 11
References
Agreement, C. B., & EMPLOYEES’UNION, G. E. N. E. R. A. L. (2015). ARTICLES OF A.
MANAGEMENT, 3, 4.
Bailey, J., Price, R., Pyman, A., & Parker, J. (2015). Union power in retail: Contrasting cases in
Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations (Online),
40(1), 1.
Buckley, P. J., & Casson, M. (2016). The future of the multinational enterprise. Springer.
http://www.worldcat.org/title/the-future-of-the-multinational-enterprise/oclc/7323699793
Clarke, L., & Fitzgerald, I. (2016). Labour mobility, the survival of a national collective
agreement and the financial crisis: The long-standing NAECI agreement.
Forsyth, A., & Stewart, A. (Eds.). (2009). Fair work: The new workplace laws and the work
choices legacy. Federation Press.
James, N., & Ombudsman, F. W. (2015). Commonwealth of Australia.
https://www.colemangreig.com.au/userfiles/file/Fair%20Work%20Information
%20Statement%202015-16%20(02177991xA3D94).pdf
Knox, A. (2016). The temporary agency work industry and its regulatory environment: Evidence
from Australia. In Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation (pp. 117-148). Routledge.
Mortimer, D. E., & Ingersoll, L. (2015). The impact of deregulation on employment relations in
the Australian retail industry. Employment Relations Record, 15(2), 43-60.

INTRODUCTION TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 12
Power, C. (2017). The Fair Work Commission's new approach. Governance Directions, 69(9),
540.
https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=149000629187288;res=IELBus
Price, R., Bailey, J & Pyman, A. (2014). Varieties of collaboration: the case of an Australian
retail union. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(6): 748–761.
Roberts, S. (2017). Round 7 enterprise bargaining. Advocate: Newsletter of the National
Tertiary Education Union, 24(1), 5.
Smith, P. (2016). Union still working hard for best outcome in enterprise agreement.
Newsmonth, 36(5), 17.
Sutherland, C. (2016). The Problem of Uncertainty: An Empirical Analysis of Indeterminate
Language and Ambiguous Provisions in Enterprise Agreements. Fed. L. Rev., 44, 111.
Tarhini, A., Ammar, H., & Tarhini, T. (2015). Analysis of the critical success factors for
enterprise resource planning implementation from stakeholders’ perspective: A
systematic review. International Business Research, 8(4), 25.