Fair Work Commission

About the reporting requirements

The General Manager of the Fair Work Commission is required to provide a number of research reports.

Under s.653 of the Fair Work Act 2009 the General Manager must provide a report on:

• developments in agreement making
• the extent to which individual flexibility arrangements under modern awards and enterprise agreements are being agreed to, and the content of those arrangements, and
• the operation of the provisions of the National Employment Standards (NES) relating to employee requests.

In addition, the Fair Work (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2009 (item 20A, Part 4, Schedule 18) required the General Manager to prepare a written report about the first 3 years of operation of the unfair dismissal system under the Fair Work Act 2009 in 2013.

Reports for the 2009-12 reporting period were tabled in the House of Representatives on 13 February 2013.

Reports for the 2012-15 reporting period were tabled in the House of Representatives on 22 February 2016, within the legislated timeframes.

Research

The Australian Workplace Relations Study

The Australian Workplace Relations Study (AWRS) was designed in part to inform the s.653 reports for the May 2013 to May 2015 reporting period.

The study used quantitative surveys to capture the views of both employers and their employees.

It has produced the first Australia-wide statistical dataset linking employer data with employee data since the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey.