Real Estate Industry
UPDATE ON CHANGES TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS LEGISLATION - REAL ESTATE
Unless you set up the workplace agreements with commission-only salespeople in a particular way you can end up having to guarantee the salesperson 38 hours each week and either pay them or be liable for $536.00 each week (including holiday pay component) whether they sell anything or not.
Even worse if they do sell something and you pay them the commission, (with any previous debits deducted) then the following week your liability of $5365.00 starts again. This situation was clear from the moment the Workchoices legislation was revealed Circa November 2005.
Commission-only salespeople fell through the cracks of the Workchoices Legislation!
The only documents which this did not apply to were the pre March 27th 2006 SBU AWA's and others done in a similar form.
It is our view that you can do "commission only" arrangements in Qld and our documentation is written in that form. However the matter is contentious so we don't recommend that you rely on that until such time as the matter is clarified before court.
In the meantime our documentation has a default provision which limits the agency liability to a sales person to a much lower rate each week when they don't sell anything. Even better with an average forward provision this weekly liability can be averaged over up to a 12 month period and offset against all commission over that period.
The worse case scenario is that you might be up for approx $150.00 each week if you have a complete dud who sells nothing. Compare that to the $546 per week per person which will happen if you do nothing.
You can use SBU documentation with confidence not just for commission only salespeople, but for Personal Assistant, Property Manager and all administration.
We use two principal tools:
Collective Workplace Agreements (CWAs): A CWA is a written agreement on which all the non Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) workers have to vote. Once registered the CWA then automatically covers all present and future non AWA or IWA workers without any further filing.
Invidvidual Workplace Agreements (IWAs or AWAs) are written agreements between the employer and employee which will then be individually registered. An IWA or AWA always overrides the provisions of a CWA.
Although different mechanisms are used to implement them the ultimate difference is only administrative.
Together with the team from ADL we have come up with a complete personalised package for all Real Estate businesses. To find out how to view our documentation please click here; to view our fees and charges click here; or email us directly for more information at Haycroft Workplace Solutions or phone us on 1300 766 380
Please read our FAQs for further clarification on the New Sales Probationary and Commission Only AWAs.