Missing links: connections between qualifications and job roles in awards

Abstract

Modern awards directly determine the pay and employment conditions of around one in five Australian workers and indirectly influence many more by setting the standard for enterprise agreements. This paper examines the relationship between formal qualifications within the Australian Qualifications Framework, job roles and pay rates in Australia’s 122 modern awards. These institutional linkages are key mechanisms connecting skills acquisition through education and training with production processes and pay outcomes. More than a quarter of awards make no connections at all between classifications and qualifications while only a quarter feature strong linkages. In most awards, the connections are relatively loose and there is also strong variation by industry. Notably many modern awards in the fast-growing service industries contain few or no connections. Despite the growing importance of non-technical skills and university-level education, references to qualifications across the modern award system overall are predominantly to trade-level Certificate III qualifications. The results suggest that the current structure of awards will do little to promote further skills acquisition among most of the award-reliant workforce.

Keywords:

• qualifications
• skill
• awards
• job classification
• pay

Notes

1. As well as a few other matters, such as conditions for outworkers and industry-specific redundancy arrangements. See Stewart (2013: 122).

2. Some recent decisions of the FWC support the contention that classifications that set qualifications as prerequisites strengthen the claims of employees by providing an external reference point to establish and verify the level and range of duties required. Where classification descriptors are not fully determinative, employers will often seek to rely on evidence about the range of duties required or the level of supervision and autonomy to argue that the employee is not entitled to the relevant classification point. See, for example, National Union of Workers v Alton West Footscray Ptd Ltd [2012] FWA 9329; ASU v Redland Shire Council 2005 AG819633 PR954795; HSU v Austin Health [2011] FWAS 6004.

3. The original relativities remain in the Manufacturing and Associated Industries and Occupations Award 2010 with the following proviso (clause B.2.2):

The minimum wages in this award do not reflect these relativities because some wage increases since 1990 have been expressed in dollar amounts rather than percentages and as a result have reduced the relativities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Damian Oliver

Damian Oliver is a Leading Research Analyst at the Workplace Research Centre, University of Sydney Business School.

Kurt Walpole

Kurt Walpole is a Research Assistant at the Workplace Research Centre and a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney.