Making sure it’s fair

Their research project, entitled ‘New Initiatives in Enforcing Employment Standards: Assessing the Effectiveness of Federal Government Compliance Strategies’, will provide the first comprehensive scholarly empirical evaluation of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

“The wellbeing of more than eight million Australian employees is underpinned by statutory workplace entitlements,” said Associate Professor John Howe, a leading contributor of theoretical and empirical labour law research in Australia and the Director of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations at the University of Melbourne.

“For the large majority of those employees, these are set by federal legislation.

“The statutory entitlements are meaningful only in so far as they are complied with, and improving the effectiveness of the federal enforcement agency, the Fair Work Ombudsman, is therefore of crucial public importance.”

Statutory entitlements for most Australian workers arise under the Fair Work Act 2009, which was assented to in April 2009. It was passed in parliament only after much debate and amendment in the Senate. The Fair Work Ombudsman is a statutory office created by the Fair Work Act, and the jurisdiction and powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman are set out in the Act. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s chief responsibility is to monitor and, if necessary, enforce compliance with minimum employment standards set under the Act. The position operates independently of Government; the Ombudsman makes his or her own decisions about all investigations.

With the Fair Work Act only coming into full effect at the beginning of 2010, the $180,000 ARC linkage project study is timely. The Act has made significant changes to minimum employment standards, with over 4000 industry level awards replaced by 130 modern awards.

Associate Professor Sean Cooney, whose research work focuses on the enforcement of labour law, said there was now a lot of confusion out there.

“Lack of awareness or difficulty with the standard is now going to be a major factor in compliance, and we will be looking at that closely,” he said.

Associate Professor Howe said it was hoped that the research findings would identify multiple ways in which enforcement practices could be improved, not only for the Fair Work Ombudsman, but also for comparable compliance agencies domestically and overseas.

“We’re examining how the Ombudsman investigates noncompliance, and how it then uses its various enforcement tools, including litigation,” Associate Professor Howe said.

The results of the study will provide the Australian Government with advice and feedback on the Ombudsman’s approach to enforcement and the impact of the new standards on employer compliance.

See: www.celrl.law.unimelb.edu.au