The ''Workplace Relations Act 1996'' was an Australian law regarding workplace conditions and rights passed by the Howard government after it came into power in 1996. It replaced the previous

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

Government's ''

Industrial Relations Act 1988 Australian labour law concerns Commonwealth, state, and common law on rights and duties of workers, unions and employers in Australia. Australian labour law (also known as industrial relations law) has a dual structure, where some employment issu ...

'', and commenced operation on 1 January 1997. In 2005, the Howard government passed the '' Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005'' which came into effect on 27 March 2006 and substantially amended the original Act, bringing in the ''

WorkChoices WorkChoices was the name given to changes made to the federal industrial relations laws in Australia by the Howard Government in 2005, being amendments to the ''Workplace Relations Act 1996'' by the ''Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choice ...

'' changes to Australian labour law. The Act was repealed on 1 July 2009 by the ''

Fair Work Act 2009 The ''Fair Work Act 2009'' (Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia, passed by the Rudd Government to reform the industrial relations system of Australia. It replaced the Howard Government's WorkChoices legislation, it established Fai ...

'' passed by the

Rudd Labor Government ''Scardinius'' is a genus of ray-finned fish in the family Cyprinidae commonly called rudds. Locally, the name "rudd" without any further qualifiers is also used for individual species, particularly the common rudd (''S. erythrophthalmus''). The ...

, and superseded by the ''

Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 The ''Fair Work Act 2009'' (Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia, passed by the Rudd Government to reform the industrial relations system of Australia. It replaced the Howard Government's WorkChoices legislation, it established Fair ...

''.

Provisions

The Act provided for the continuation of the existing federal award system which provided a minimum set of terms and conditions for employment. It kept the previous

Australian Industrial Relations Commission The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), known from 1956 to 1973 as the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and from 1973 to 1988 as the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, was a tribunal with powers ...

, which continued to determine federal awards but whose determinations were restricted to consideration of just 20 "allowable award matters", namely: *classification of employees *hours of work *rates of pay *piece rates, tallies and bonuses *various forms of leave (e.g. annual and long service leave) *public holidays *allowances *penalty rates *redundancy pay *notice of termination *dispute settling procedures *stand down provisions *jury service *pay and conditions Some of its provisions upon first being enacted included: *the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements, a form of individual contract which can override collective agreements; *expansion of the use of

enterprise bargaining agreement Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole indust ...

s; *a reduction of the allowable matters in federal awards to 20; *restrictions on union activity; and *outlawing

closed shop A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed. This is different fr ...

Associated regulations

The original regulations associated with the Act, the ''Workplace Relations Regulations 1996'', were repealed and replaced with the ''Workplace Relations Regulations 2006'' in order to accommodate the ''

'' amendments to the ''Workplace Relations Act 1996'' introduced on 27 March 2006.comlaw.gov.au
/ref> Those regulations were themselves repealed when the ''Fair Work Act 2009'' commenced on 1 July 2009.

References

1996 in Australian law Australian labour law Acts of the Parliament of Australia Minimum wage law 1996 in politics Industrial agreements 1996 in labor relations {{Australia-law-stub