Following the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared that Thursday 22 September 2022 will be observed as a one-off national holiday. What are the employer obligations in relation to construction projects?

Employers should treat Thursday 22 September 2022 as any other public holiday and pay employees accordingly. For Electrical Electronic and Communications Contracting Award 2020 (the Award) employees, you will need to remember:

• If any employees will be on approved annual leave on the public holiday, that day must be re-credited to the employee’s annual leave balance and otherwise paid at the ordinarily hourly rate based on what they would have been paid had they worked an ordinary day.
• If Thursday 22 September 2022 is a pre-arranged Rostered Day Off (RDO) for any of your employees, that RDO can be substituted for another day taken in the same work cycle or the next work cycle.
• For employees required to work on the public holiday, please be mindful of entitlement to overtime rates at 250% of their ordinary hourly rate for full-time and part-time employees or 312.5% for casual employees.
• If your employees who are shift workers are required to work on the public holiday, then:
  • if employed on continuous shift work—at the rate of 200% of the ordinary hourly rate; or
  • if employed on other than continuous shift work—at the rate of 150% of the ordinary hourly rate for the first two hours and 200% of the ordinary hourly rate thereafter.
• Clause 26 of the Award provides for the substitution of public holidays if the employer and employee agree to do so.

Should you decide that your business will be free of work that day, your employees are entitled to be paid for their ordinary work hours despite not working on that day.

Employers may consider the strategy of continuing to work Thursday 22 September 2022, understanding the additional overtime rate cost, but also factoring in less disruption to your business which could potentially flow into Friday 23 September 2022 for staff who might like to make an extra-long weekend for themselves.

The National Electrical and Communications Association (NECA) has called on the Federal Government to compensate small businesses hardest hit by the short-notice announcement of a snap day of mourning: “Small and Medium-sized businesses have expressed disappointment that a well-deserved day of commemoration will cause a significant impact on their operations.”

Construction industry associations have also called on the government to place pauses on completion penalties for small businesses who have already been rocked by a dwindling construction workforce only made weaker by ongoing sicknesses as the COVID pandemic lingers on across the country.