MINISTER for Employment Michaelia Cash has amended the Fair Work Regulations to address a recurring compliance issue with the Notice of Employee Representational Rights (NERR) form.

The amendment to the NERR has seen the last paragraph of the notice changed to the following:

“If you have any questions about this notice or about enterprise bargaining, please speak to your employer or bargaining representative, or contact the Fair Work Ombudsman or the Fair Work Commission.”

AREEA members will note that the NERR had, until now, required employers to manually fill in the phone number of the Fair Work Commission hotline. The confusion between the FWC and the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) had seen a number of agreement approvals recently overturned due to the FWO phone number being provided instead of the FWC.

This change applies to all NERRs given to employees on or after 3 April 2017.

This amendment to the regulations aligns with AREEA’s letter to the Minister in January, in which we call for urgent reform to application of the NERR, through the regulations, to address increasing instances of the FWC rejecting or overturning agreement approvals for minor technical or procedural defects that otherwise had little to no impact on agreements genuinely reached.

The changes to the regulations was a surprise, albeit a welcome one, given the Minister is also expected to introduce to Parliament in coming days a legislative amendment to the Fair Work Act which would provide members of the Commission with more discretion to overlook other minor technical defects in the NERR in the agreement approvals stage.

Other common minor compliance issues with the NERR include documents stapled together instead of provided separately, the form being issued slightly late, and an employer which substituted one word for another for clarity purposes.

“AREEA welcomes the Minister moving to correct issues with the application of the NERR form, which are widespread in impact,” director of workplace relations, Amanda Mansini, said.

“The regulation change confirms that an employee should receive appropriate advice, consistent with the intent of the NERR, from either the Fair Work Commission or the Fair Work Ombudsman. It also highlights that the Commission’s recent decisions to overturn agreements for providing the FWO number in the NERR are at odds with the intent of the legislation.

“These changes are important to get the system functioning as it was intended and would benefit employers, employees and unions alike.”

AREEA will keep members updated on further developments in this area over coming weeks.