Page 4548 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 26 November 2019
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access long service leave. This might occur, for example, when an employer’s contract to provide a service to a client is terminated and a new contract for the same service is entered into with a new employer.
A worker engaged in the delivery of that service would quite often continue in their previous role, albeit with a new employer. As a result, they would lose continuity of service for long service leave purposes. These arrangements, which limit continuity of service with a single employer, are common in the construction, community services, cleaning and security industries. That is why they were selected for inclusion in the ACT’s effective, progressive and world-leading portable long service leave schemes.
Long service leave, under the portable schemes, is accumulated for length of service in a particular industry, rather than a workers’ length of service with a single employer. It is interesting to note that the Victorian government has recently legislated to expand the coverage of its construction industry based portable long service leave scheme to include the cleaning, security and community services industries. This essentially constitutes a harmonisation of coverage with the territory’s portable long service leave schemes.
The ACT government and the portable long service leave schemes governing board are not resting on their laurels. On the contrary, both are committed to improving the performance of the schemes, including by making them more accessible to workers and covered employers and by improving education, compliance and enforcement activities.
The Long Service Leave (Portable Schemes) Amendment Bill 2019 is evidence of this commitment to continual improvement. The bill will provide better compliance and enforcement tools and regulatory incentives; more flexibility in crediting unrecorded service of a worker under the scheme; an ability for the Long Service Leave Authority to recover levies where there is evidence of phoenixing behaviour; and clarification around the terminology used to describe the community sector industry.
An employer in an industry is covered under the scheme if they fall within a covered industry. The obligation falls on covered employers to register with the Long Service Leave Authority. Once registered, employers must meet their obligations under the portable scheme, which, amongst other obligations, includes the lodging of quarterly returns and the payment of a levy in relation to registered employees identified and verified through the quarterly returns submitted by employers.
Both these steps are necessary in supporting a sustainable scheme that entitles workers in these industries to access portable leave entitlements. Unfortunately, the current legislation only allows for criminal offences to be prosecuted before the courts for non-compliance, which can be costly, or the application of a small late fee that does not reflect the amount of unpaid levies owed to the scheme.
This bill will amend the act to establish a better compliance framework. It will establish an interest regime to address the late payment of levies that is proportionate to the amount of levies owed by employers who fail to pay their levy on time. This
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