Thursday, 18 October 2018 MEDIA RELEASE
The intention of loadings for casual employees is to offset the entitlements received by full time employment, Australian Hotels Association CEO Stephen Ferguson and Tourism Accommodation Chair Martin Ferguson said today.
The comments follow a recent decision by the Federal Court of Australia which found that a casual employee was entitled to payment for untaken annual leave following the termination of their employment. The employee involved was a fly-in fly-out worker at a mining site in Queensland.
AHA National CEO Stephen Ferguson said the rules should be clear.
“An employee should not be unjustly better off by receiving the benefits of both casual employment loadings and full-time or part-time employment entitlements,” he said.
“The AHA supports the principle all employees should be properly categorised as to the basis of their employment, whether it be full-time, part-time or casual – and paid accordingly.
“If an employee is engaged and paid as casual and receives a casual loading as part of that arrangement, it is only fair that casual loading payment be offset against any other entitlements that a court determines should be paid, if that arrangement is later determined to be something other than casual.”
Chair of Tourism Accommodation Australia the Hon Martin Ferguson AM said “it has been a long standing principle that the payment of a causal loading is in lieu of accumulated entitlements such as annual leave, sick leave and public holidays.”
“It would be unfair for small business now to be caught with a demand for the payment of these entitlements in addition to having already paid a 25% loading in lieu of them,” he said.
“If a business was expected to pay the loading plus these entitlements, it would represent double dipping and a breach of faith with the way the IR system has operated for decades.”
Media Contact: Jason Bartlett, 0433 95 46 57