JobKeeper Directions – Is Your Business Exposed?
With businesses starting to receive JobKeeper payments, the economy is in the midst of transitioning to the ‘new normal’ and business owners are finally starting to feel like they can, at least somewhat, breathe again. Consequently, now is the time to ‘take stock’, conduct an audit and ensure that the measures that your business implemented (most likely in haste), over the past few months are not now leaving your business exposed to potential claims and other legal risks.
Notably, a new section was introduced into the Fair Work Act 2009 (the Act), which allows the Commission to deal with disputes specifically regarding employer ‘JobKeeper directions’. This dispute mechanism allows for employees to lodge an application (at no cost) detailing their dispute, to which an employer must then respond to the application in the relevant time frame. Once the application and response has been submitted, the Fair Work Commission will deal with the dispute via arbitration, mediation, conciliation or alike, and it has broad powers to make orders “to give effect to a direction, set aside the direction, substitute the direction for a different direction or any other direction it considers appropriate”. There are also civil penalties that can be imposed on the employer, in certain circumstances.
New figures revealed by the Fair Work Commission show that its overall workload is already up by 40% compared to April 2019, with the increase apparently due to more cases about unfair dismissal, JobKeeper directions and JobKeeper payment disputes.
As at 7 May 2020, the Fair Work Commission had already received 212 disputes pertaining to the JobKeeper scheme, with the leading dispute topic being JobKeeper directions pertaining to changes to employee working hours.
Most businesses had to respond quickly to be able to adapt to the COVID-19 impacts and this saw a number of businesses taking drastic measures both in the restructuring of their businesses (such as new service offerings and operating hours), but also in the restructuring of their employees and the basis on which they are employed (such as reduced hours, different hours, change of duties and roles, change of location of work and so on). Most of these changes to employees’ employment can be made legally in certain circumstances, provided they strictly comply with the requirements of the Act. The problem is, most of these changes were made in a ‘reactive’ manner by businesses and when businesses ‘react’ they can often fail to comply with the myriad of applicable legal requirements.
Here are a few things that employers must know in relation to JobKeeper payments:
- no employer is entitled to (and is taken never to have been entitled to), a JobKeeper payment unless it complies with record keeping requirements under the relevant Acts and Regulations - this could very well mean, that if employers and businesses have been receiving JobKeeper payments but they did not comply with the record keeping requirements, they could be required to repay the JobKeeper payments;
- JobKeeper enabling directions cannot be made retrospectively - this means that directions given before the Act was amended on 9 April 2020 are not authorised, meaning they could be construed as unlawful and employees may have remedies against their employers in this regard (or civil penalties may apply);
- JobKeeper enabling directions will not be valid unless an employer gave the requisite written notice to employees (3 days before the direction commenced) and consulted with the employees in accordance with the requirements under the Act; and
- the JobKeeper payments must be dealt with strictly in accordance with the relevant parts of the Act, otherwise the employer risks a claim by the employee and also civil penalties being imposed against the employer.
The above examples are a mere snapshot of certain key considerations that employers ought to turn their mind to, so as to avoid unnecessarily exposing their businesses to legal claims and potential civil penalties.
It is now critically important that businesses audit the decisions they made over the past few months, to ensure those decisions strictly complied with the relevant laws, regulations and rules. Where it is found that decisions didn’t comply, a number of corrective measures are available to businesses to correct or mitigate any potential impacts.
If your business needs assistance, our team of employment law experts are standing by ready to guide you through this audit process.
EL has further put together an exclusive JobKeeper Audit Package, available to the first five businesses (with under fifteen employees) who contact us, under which we will audit your business and provide you with a compliance report and summary of required corrective measures (if necessary) for a fixed fee of $2,200.00 (incl. GST).
Call our team today to take advantage of this exclusive offer: