The National Employment Standards (NES) are the minimum entitlements of workers covered by federal awards in Australia under the Fair Work Act 2009, which generally took effect from 1 January 2010. An award, employment contract, enterprise agreement or other registered agreement can not provide for conditions that are less than the national minimum wage or the NES and they can not be excluded.[1]
NES reconstitutes the industrial relations safety net. All employees are entitled to the ten National Employment Standards (NES), which are similar to the five Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard under WorkChoices.[2] Additional occupation- or industry-specific conditions are protected through the new modern awards. There are 122 of these awards, compared to over 4000 under the previous system.
The streamlining of the award system is one of the most significant aspects of the reforms. The government, motivated by a desire to streamline, simplify, and promote flexibility and productivity, set its goal as creating a new minimum standard that all parties in the employment relationship could understand, instead of the over-complicated system of decades past.
Not all commentators agree that the Rudd government struck the right balance between simplification and appropriate protection. Baird and Williamson,[3] for example, argue that the new minimum standards are detrimental to certain groups, particularly women, because the new awards fail to adequately cover women working in social services, call centres and the health sector.
Under the National Employment Standards,[4] employees have certain minimum conditions. Together with pay rates in modern awards (which also generally took effect from 1 January 2010) and minimum wage orders, the NES makes up the safety net that cannot be altered to the disadvantage of the employee.[1]
There are ten minimum conditions covered under the NES: a maximum number of hours in the working week, requests for flexible working arrangements, parental leave and related entitlements, annual leave, personal or carer's leave and compassionate leave, long service leave, community service leave, public holidays, notice of termination and redundancy pay, and a fair work information statement.[1][5]
The 10 minimum entitlements of the NES are:
The new maximum weekly hour regulation requires additional hours to be reasonable, in the absence of which the maximum weekly hours of work of a full-time employee is 38 hours.[6]
Another change is the 'Requests for Flexible Working Arrangements'. This NES allows parents or carers of a child under school age, or of a child under 18 with a disability, the right to request a change in working arrangements to assist with the child's care.[7]