AEU Industrial Update #5 – February 2024

The AEU Industrial Update provides you with information on industrial issues impacting you and your workplace. This edition contains information on:

- Teacher classification restructure
- Changes to fixed term contracts under the Fair Work Act
- Transition from yearly to daily accrual of personal leave
- Previous editions of the Industrial Update

The AEU Workplace Advocacy team is planning future editions of the Industrial Update, as well as the fact sheets that we write on a range of industrial topics. If you have a spare 2 minutes, please fill in the this survey to help us better understand the information you want to see in the future.

Teacher classification restructure

If you are a classroom teacher in the EDU, you might have noticed some changes to your payslip this year. In the new EA, the AEU achieved a salary restructure that makes teacher classification simpler and gets teachers earning more, faster.

The salary restructure took effect on 27 January 2024. This is also the date that you will have advanced in the salary classification, if you’re eligible. If you’re confused, check out the AEU salary restructure explainer or contact the AEU office for assistance.

Additional increment points were also won by the AEU during bargaining. These additional increments provide a new salary step for top of the scale teachers, SLCs and SLBs. Members will be eligible to advance to these newly created increment points in January 2025.

Changes to fixed term contracts under the Fair Work Act

f you’re a teacher or school assistant and you have a fixed term temporary contract, you should be aware of some changes to the law that might affect you.

A fixed term contract is an employment contract which terminates at the end of a set period. For EDU and CIT employees, this might look like a contract which ends at the conclusion of a term or school year. (If you’re not sure what kind of contract you have, you can email the AEU and we’ll help you out).

Recent changes the Fair Work Act are designed to stop employers misusing fixed term/temporary contracts. Repeated renewal of these kinds of contracts can mean a worker doesn’t have access to stable and secure employment.

The law now puts some limits on fixed term/temporary contracts. They now can’t be for more than two years (including any extensions or renewals) and can’t include any option to renew or extend beyond two years or renew more than once. Basically, if it looks like ongoing and permanent work, it should have an ongoing and permanent contract.

There are also measures to crack down on employers avoiding compliance with the changes, including by ending the employment before the end of the contract, not re-engaging the employee, or changing the type of work the employee does so as to not be captured by the requirement.

These changes are retrospectively applied, so if you have been employed on fixed term/temporary contracts for some time, you might have reached the limitation on fixed term contracts.

The AEU office has become aware that some members have been told by their workplace that the new laws mean they can’t be offered another temporary contract, and they therefore need to become casual, despite performing the same role. This is not what the changes to the Fair Work Act intend. You should instead be made aware of an opportunity to convert to permanent employment.

If this has happened to you or someone you know, please contact the AEU office immediately for advice and assistance.

Further information about the changes to fixed term contracts can be found on the Fair Work Ombudsman website.

Transition from yearly to daily accrual of personal leave

Personal leave, also known as ‘sick leave’ or ‘carer’s leave’, is a form of paid leave available to employees who are unfit for work because of an illness or injury, or because the employee needs to care for someone in their immediate family or household who is ill, injured or affected by an emergency. Personal leave may also be used by an employee to attend a medical appointment with a registered health professional for themselves, or to attend with a member of their immediate family or household.

Full-time temporary and permanent employees accrue 3.6 weeks (18 days) of personal leave per year. For those employees who work less than full-time hours, they accrue a proportionate amount based on the amount they work. For instance, if a person is engaged on 50% full-time equivalency, they will accrue 1.8 weeks (9 days) per year. Casuals are not entitled to personal leave.

Traditionally, personal leave in the ACTPS has accrued using a yearly method. What this means is that employees would receive their personal leave accrual once per year usually on the anniversary of the date they commenced with the ACTPS. For instance, if you commenced as a full-time employee on 26 January 2022, you would have been credited 3.6 weeks of personal leave on that date. On 26 January 2023, you would have been credited a further 3.6 weeks.

The yearly accrual method has both advantages and disadvantages. The major criticism of this method is that employees need to wait 12 months to receive their next credit of personal leave. This can leave some employees in a position where they have no accrued leave and need to wait until their next accrual date to be able to take paid leave.

Under all new enterprise agreements across the ACTPS, including those covering our members in the EDU and CIT, the accrual method will change in 2024. Instead of personal leave being credited to you once per year, employees will accrue their personal leave using a daily method. This means employees will accrue personal leave in smaller chunks over the course of the year. This is a similar method to how annual leave accrues.

Due to 2024 being the transition year, the AEU and other unions have secured an interim arrangement for employees to ensure that there are no unintentional consequences of this change. On your accrual date this year, all permanent and temporary employees will receive their usual yearly accrual. The following day, they will then commence accruing personal leave on a daily basis. This means that employees will be entitled to accrue and access more personal leave this year.

If you have any questions about the transition to daily accrual, please reach out to the AEU office. Further information about personal leave generally can be found by accessing our Fact Sheet.