Changes to the Fast Food Industry Award – Fair Work Commission’s Four-Yearly Review 2022

As part of the finalisation of the very long-running Fair Work Commission 4 Yearly Review of Modern Awards, some additional drafting changes to the Fast Food Industry Award have now been finalised.

The Award has been updated under the FWC’s ‘plain English’ process, with the aim of removing ambiguity and simplifying interpretation of the Award.

The updated Award, now titled Fast Food Industry Award 2020, came into effect from 28 July 2022.

What You Need to Know About the Changes to the Award:

Whilst there were several changes to the Award, the majority of them do not significantly impact the interpretation of the Award. However, below is a list of relevant changes in the Award which may be relevant to clients of ER Strategies:

  • The Award has been renamed to Fast Food Industry Award 2020. Any references to the Award in contract templates or policy documents may need to be updated to reflect this.
  • Significant cosmetic changes, including updates and shuffling of parts and/or clauses of the Award, which have been renamed, moved or updated. This means some clauses may be worded differently in comparison to the 2010 version of the Award, or key information or provisions may now be housed in different parts of the Award.
  • The ‘fast food industry’ definition has been redefined to intentionally exclude delivery businesses such as Menulog and UberEats. These businesses market and/or deliver fast food on behalf of companies which prepare and sell the fast food in the first place. The new Award definition emphasises the taking of orders, as well as the preparing and selling of fast-food products.
  • There has been an update to unpaid carer’s leave provisions for casual employees under the Award, making it clear that the provision allows absence for casuals who are required to care for a person due to illness and injury.
  • The Award has provided clarity surrounding the base rate of pay for the purpose of payment for Annual Leave and Annual Leave Loading. Under the updated Annual Leave provisions, employees who are paid higher than the base rate of pay specified under the Award are entitled to receive the higher rate whilst on annual leave.
    If you require additional information, Sections 16 and 90 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) outline Annual Leave provisions. The minimum rate of pay under the Award will still be used to calculate leave loading.
  • The Commission has deemed there are no substantial provisions relating to Shiftwork in the Award. As a result, all references to ‘Shiftwork’ and ‘Shiftworker’ have been removed from the 2020 version of the Award.

In the 2010 version of the Award, references to Shiftwork were for the purpose of the additional annual leave entitlements for Shiftworkers under the Act. The removal of the reference to ‘Shiftwork’ and ‘Shiftworkers’ revokes the additional week of annual leave that was previously available to ‘Shiftworkers’ as defined under the 2010 version of the Award, in line with Section 87 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).

Previous accruals for additional periods of annual leave accrued prior to 28 July 2022 should be honoured.

All permanent employees will be entitled to 4 weeks of annual leave (pro-rata for permanent part-time employees) per year.

  • All references to ‘Schedule X’ provisions during the COVID-19 pandemic have been removed.

There were no updates relating to part-time employee provisions, breaks, or payments/rates of pay as part of this Review.

For consistency, ER Strategies has updated any references to the Fast Food Industry Award 2010 to reflect the new name of the Fast Food Industry Award 2020 on key resources including the wage schedule and manager calculator on our Online HR service portal.

If you have any questions about this update, please do not hesitate to contact ERS on 1300 55 66 37.

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