For employers with employees covered by the affected awards, we recommend:

• planning for shut downs now (especially Christmas leave periods), to try and ensure that all staff have sufficiently accrued annual leave so as to avoid unnecessarily having to pay employee’s their normal remuneration for the period of shut down.
• carefully reviewing the new model clause to assess what obligations will now apply and/or what has changed eg under the Timber Industry Award 2020 (Cth) [MA000071] the clause remains very similar with the exception of the allowance to direct employees to take unpaid leave.
• employers applying greater scrutiny with employee annual leave requests to ensure employees have sufficient annual leave balances to cover any planned shut down(s).
• employers considering amending existing, or introducing new, leave policies, that state that in circumstances where shut downs occur:
  • employees will be reasonably directed to take a period of annual leave pursuant to the terms of the relevant modern award.
  • following a written request by the employee, the employer may grant the employee annual leave in advance.
  • and an annual leave request for a different period of time in the year has been denied as the employee has insufficient annual leave accrued to cover the period of a shut down, leave may be approved, however, only on the basis that the employee agrees to take unpaid leave during the planned shut down.
• employers introduce new clauses within employment agreements, that state that the parties agree that unpaid leave will be taken in circumstances where there is insufficient annual leave accrued to cover the period of any shut down.