How Well Do You Know Your Rights As A Casual Worker In The Construction Industry?

Casual workers in Australia make up about 20 per cent of the total workforce – that’s around 2.5 million people.

But knowing your rights as a casual worker can be, well, kind of confusing.

Just like people in full-time employment, there are various pieces of government legislation that have been put in place to protect the minimum rights of casual workers across all industries – including construction industries.

Awards are industry – or role-specific – documents, which spell out legal requirements for things like the minimum pay rate and working conditions for workers.

In the construction industry alone, there’s a General On-Site Building and Construction Award, as well as more role-specific ones like the Joinery Award, the Electrical Award, or the Plumbing Award.

Whether you’re a trainee, an apprentice, or you’ve been working in your industry for decades, the Award is what dictates how much you should be paid for the work you do.

Then there’s The National Employment Standards, or NES, which for casual workers ensures that they have a way to access things like compassionate leave and flexible working arrangements.

But if you’ve worked for a few different companies, you might have found that some of them have something called an Enterprise Agreement in place and others don’t.

So What Are Enterprise Agreements? 

They’re often referred to as ‘EA’s and, at their core, they’re agreements that are made between an organisation and the people that it employs.

Enterprise Agreements focus on establishing, more holistically, the best possible working conditions at an organisation – from the perspectives of both the employer and the employees. 

And one of the major requisites of an Enterprise Agreement is that it needs to ensure that workers will be better off for it being in place than they would be just on their industry’s specific Award.

Enterprise Agreements can include clauses about important issues to workers; things like specifying rates of pay, standard working hours, overtime policy, and leave allowances.

Once an Enterprise Agreement has been drafted and agreed by an employer and its employees, it then has to go through a rigorous process of approval by the Fair Work Commission.

Not All Workplaces Have Enterprise Agreements

But they aren’t mandatory – in Australia there’s no legal requirement for any employer to have them in place.

A lot of casual workers rely on the rights that are laid out in things like their industry Award, or legislation like the NES.

And in reality, many workers face ongoing battles when it comes to their rights being met.

In the construction industry alone, casual workers still experience a number of – to be honest, outrageously outdated – challenges when it comes to being treated properly.

Poor project scheduling by labour hire companies means that workers often aren’t placed on sites until the last minute. 

Miscommunication over hours of work, timesheets, and overtime policy result in workers not being paid what they thought they would be – let alone on time.

Even something as basic as insurance that protects workers on site is often a point of contention amongst casual construction workers and their employers.

And it’s those frustrations that formed the foundations of some of the industry’s most innovative companies, like Dragon Labour Hire.

Why Dragon Labour Hire Was Created

The labour hire company was founded to solve the challenges that both employers and employees in the construction industry face, and it uses ‘the power of technology’ to improve the lives of both workers and construction site managers.

In 2018, Dragon Group launched Australia’s first totally mobile labour hire and management solution app – the Dragon App. 

It utilises industry-leading technology to automate a lot of the previously painful industry processes.

And then in 2020 the same company launched the Dragon Worker app, which empowers workers to have autonomy over their own careers by giving them the tools they need to do so.

Construction workers can use the app to list their skills and availability, submit their timesheets, manage payments for jobs they’ve worked, and even keep track of their work preferences.

While industry-specific Awards, pieces of government legislation like the NES, or even Enterprise Agreements go a long way to establishing fundamental workers rights, the reality is that millions of Australian workers still face daily battles to work in environments that provide them those rights.

Dragon Labour Hire & its industry leading apps are  dedicated to ‘improving the lives of everyone involved’ in the construction industry.

It wants to transform that industry – by making recruitment seamless, by driving efficiency, by increasing accountability, and by improving working conditions – so that it’s an industry that works for everyone involved; the clients, the employers, and most importantly the workers.

Download Dragon Worker now www.thedragongroup.com.au/dragon-worker