Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2014, published 104th ILC session (2015)

Forty-Hour Week Convention, 1935 (No. 47) - Australia (Ratification: 1970)

Other comments on C047

Observation

2009

Direct Request

2014
2009

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Article 1 of the Convention. Overtime work. The Committee notes the Government’s comprehensive report and in particular the enactment of the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Fair Work Regulation 2009. More specifically, the Committee notes that section 62 of the Fair Work Act states that the average weekly hours for a full-time employee must not exceed 38 hours. Additional hours worked must be reasonable according to the criteria set out in section 62(3). For their calculation, section 63 permits the averaging of normal working hours over a period of no more than 26 weeks, as indicated in section 64. The Act explicitly states the various factors that determine whether additional hours are reasonable, but it does not specify a limit to overtime hours. In this regard, the Committee has taken note of the observations provided by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), in which it expressed concern regarding the concept of “reasonable” additional hours, which may give significant discretion to employers to control the average working hours. In this respect, the Committee refers to paragraph 79 of its General Survey of 1984 on working time in which it underlined that undue facilitation of overtime, for example, by not limiting the circumstances in which it may be permitted or by allowing relatively high maximums, could in the most egregious cases tend to defeat the objective of Recommendation No. 116 of a social standard of a 40-hour week and make irrelevant the provisions as to normal working hours. The Committee requests the Government to provide any observation it may wish to make in reply to the concerns raised by the ACTU as well as to supply further information regarding how the limits of overtime hours are applied in practice.