Recent court decision may affect promotional worker pay rates

A Geelong station has been caught up in a pay dispute as a result of a recent court ruling relating to the miscellaneous workers award.
 
K rock is in mediation with former employee Jacob O’Brien, who claims the station underpaid him by up to $10 per hour on weekend shifts.
 
O’Brien, who worked for K Rock as a casual promotions employee, has lodged a complaint with the Fair Work Ombudsman for underpayment of $180 for work conducted during three weekend shifts, which he believes should have been paid at penalty rates.
 
A court ruling during September is believed to have set a precedent for Section 4.2 of the Miscellaneous Award to cover promotional workers, who were previously thought to have been excluded from this award because they were “marketing” or “public relations” workers.
 
The station, and perhaps others across the country, had been paying its promotional workers under the National Employment Standard, but the September case may have changed that by extending Miscellaneous Award coverage to promotional workers.
 
The current wording of Section 4.2 of the Miscellaneous Award reads:

The award does not cover those classes of employees who, because of the nature or seniority of their role, have not traditionally been covered by awards including managerial employees and professional employees such as accountants and finance, marketing, legal, human resources, public relations and information technology specialists.

 
The Award is dated June this year, and has had six gazetted variations since then, but none of them directly addresses section 4.2 of the award, so the matter is not clear at this time.
 
The O’Brien mediation case continues.
 

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