Changes to making agreements

Statement of principles on genuine agreement

The Commission must take into account a statement of principles when determining whether an enterprise agreement has been genuinely agreed to by the employees. 

These principles provide guidance to employers about what they must do to ensure employees have genuinely agreed to the agreement.

Employees who vote for an agreement must have:

• sufficient interest in the agreement, and 
• must be sufficiently representative of the coverage of the agreement.

Changes to the better off overall test (the BOOT) will allow the Commission to:

• amend an agreement after it’s lodged, if the Commission is of the view that it doesn’t pass the BOOT, or
• reconsider an agreement after it has been approved, if relevant circumstances were not properly considered or if circumstances have changed.

The legislation will also be updated to include the following factors:

• that Commission must make a global assessment about whether any reasonably foreseeable employee is better off under the enterprise agreement than if the modern award applied

and that we are required to consider factors such as:

• the more and less beneficial terms of the agreement compared to the relevant modern award
• the patterns or kinds of work, or types of employment, that are reasonably foreseeable at the time the agreement is made
• the views of the employer(s), employees and bargaining representatives, including giving primary consideration to a common view (if any) of bargaining representatives about whether the agreement passes the BOOT.

From 6 June 2023, there will be 3 types of multi-enterprise agreements:

• Supported bargaining agreements 
• Single interest employer agreements 
• Cooperative workplaces agreements.

Multi-enterprise agreement voting requests

Before requesting employees to vote on a multi-enterprise agreement or multi-enterprise agreement variation, an employer must have:

• agreement in writing to the making of the request from all relevant employee organisations, or
• a voting request order. 

A voting request order can be made by the Commission on application. An order would permit an employer to make the request for employees to vote. 

Which test applies will depend on when you started bargaining and when the agreement was made. Use our tool to Understand the tests that apply to your agreement.