EMPLOYERS WILL not be required to keep track of working hours of employees who are not paid overtime, unless the employee earns less than $55,000 per year, under an amendment to the rules on record keeping in the WorkChoices legislation
EMPLOYERS WILL not be required to keep track of working hours of employees who are not paid overtime, unless the employee earns less than $55,000 per year, under an amendment to the rules on record keeping in the WorkChoices legislation.
WorkChoices introduced the previous administrative burden by stipulating that employers record hours of work for all employees, including those on awards or covered by industrial agreements. Before WorkChoices, there was no statutory obligation to do so.
There are three categories of employees to consider under the amendment, according to Neil Napper, partner at Deacons.
“According to the Minister’s announcement, where you’ve got an employee who is payed an annual salary less than $55,000 per year and who already has some sort of entitlement to receive overtime payments, then the employers have to keep records about the starting and finishing times and their total hours worked. In other words, there’s no change from the existing requirements of the regulations.
“However, if you’ve got an employee who’s payed an annual salary of less than $55,000 per year, but there is no entitlement for that employee to be payed overtime, then all the employer has to do is keep records of the total hours worked rather than their daily starting and finishing times,” he said.
The second category applies to employees who are paid an annual salary of $55,000 or more and also has some sort of entitlement to overtime under a contract, award or industrial agreement. Employers are required to keep records of starting and finishing times for such employees, he said.
There is no obligation to keep any records for the final category of employees, who are paid an annual salary of $55,000 or more, and who have no entitlement to overtime.
Napper believes the change is a good development for employers as, “it will revert the initial reaction of employers to the pre-WorkChoices position, which is for most non-reward employers and employees who don’t have their terms and conditions regulated by a workplace agreement of some kind.”
