Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill

Breastfeeding facilities and breaks

While new section 69Y requires the employer to provide facilities and breaks for employees who wish to breastfeed “so far as it is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances”, clause 4 omits these words. Some submitters believed that this creates an inconsistency.

We therefore recommend that the words “so far as is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances” be added to clause 4(a) so as to make it consistent with new section 69Y.

Entitlement to rest breaks and meal breaks

New section 69ZD(2), when read with new section 69ZD(5) and the definition of “work period” in section 69ZD, would entitle employees to a third 10-minute rest break in each working day if their work period (which includes breaks) were just over eight hours long. This is because no period of work is specified after which the entitlement would begin to apply. We therefore recommend that section 69ZD(2) be amended so that employees would become entitled to a 10-minute rest break after having worked for two hours or more, but not more than four hours. When read with section 69ZD(5), this would also mean that an employee would become entitled to a third 10-minute rest break if his or her work period were 10 hours or more.

Timing of rest breaks

Many submitters were concerned that the bill is too prescriptive about when rest and meal breaks are to be taken.

The intention of section 69ZE(5) is to provide employers and employees with the flexibility to agree when rest and meal breaks are to be taken during the work period. Only in the absence of an agreement by both parties does the bill prescribe the timing of those breaks in sections 69ZE (1) to (4).

Many submitters were concerned, however, that section 69ZE(5) does not make it clear that the timing of rest and meal breaks may be agreed between employers and employees.

We recommend that section 69ZE(5) be deleted and new section 69ZE(1AA) inserted, to make it clear that rest and meal breaks are to be observed at times agreed between employers and employees or as specified by sections 69ZE(1) to (4) if no such agreement exists.

Relationship between Part and employment agreements

We recommend that the bill be amended to clarify that section 69ZG, which provides that an employment agreement may not exclude, restrict, or reduce an employee’s statutory break entitlements, does not override the provisions of section 69ZE, which allows an employer and employee to agree about when during the work period the break entitlements are taken.