The New Quarry Industry Award

As of 1 January 2010, the new modern Quarrying Award 2010 together with the new National Employment Standards outline the basic working conditions for employees covered by the national workplace relations system. ROGER BUCKLEY reports.

THE development of the new set of “modern” industrial awards has been in progress over the last few years, with the CMPA providing comments on the draft Quarrying Award. The new Award together with the National Employment Standards (NES)detail the employee’s terms and conditions of employment.

NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS

The NES comprise 10 minimum standards of employment covering the following entitlements:

• Maximum weekly hours of work – 38 hours/week plus reasonable additional hours
• Requests for flexible working arrangement – parents of school age children can request a change in working arrangements to care for the child
• Parental leave & related entitlements – up to 12 months unpaid leave plus other forms of leave
• Annual leave – 4 weeks paid leave per year
• Personal /carer’s leave and compassionate leave – 10 days paid personal /carer’s leave, 2 days unpaid carer’s leave and 2 days compassionate leave
• Community service leave – unpaid leave for voluntary emergency activity and leave for jury service
• Long service leave – transitional entitlement pending development of a uniform national standard
• Notice of termination and redundancy pay – dependent on length of service
• Provision of Fair Work Information Statement – must be provided by employers to all new employees. Available from the Fair Work Australia website www.fairwork.gov.au

Fact sheets outlining the minimum rights and responsibilities of all employees, employers and contractors under Australia’s workplace laws are available from http://www.fairwork.gov.au/Fact-sheets-tools/Pages/Fact-sheets.aspx?role=employees

QUARRYING AWARD 2010

The new, modern Quarrying Award 2010 covers employers throughout Australia in the quarrying industry and their employees in the described classifications. Quarrying covers operations in lime and/or stone quarries, sand pits or gravel pits, but not dimension stone, brick, shale or slate quarries; as well as stone, brick concrete, masonry, asphalt recycling operations.

The 2010 Award varies slightly from the previous Award. Some of the key aspects of the new Award include:

• Rates of Pay

• Leading hand/in charge of plant

• Industry allowance – 3.25% of standard rate per week
• First aid – 1.9% of standard rate per week
• Use of own vehicle – $0.74 per kilometer
• Payment for wet weather – if too wet for normal duties, paid for all time lost
• Protective clothing – up to 2 pairs of overalls and safety boots, demonstrated costs of laundering and reimbursed cost of tools and appliances
• Overtime – work outside of the normal daily working hours will be paid at time and half for first 2 hours and double time beyond that.

The complete Quarrying Award can be downloaded fr om the Australian Industrial Relations Council’s website at http://www.airc.gov.au/awardmod/fullbench/awards.htm

You must be logged in to post a comment Login