I’m wondering whether I’ll have to wait a long time after royal accent for the new penalty rates bill [1] to enjoy not having to work 40 hours a week (and finally be able to work a standard 38).
From what I can tell, the bill only requires the Fair Work Commission to make/update awards such that you must be paid overtime, meaning the professional employees award won’t be valid anymore (where they don’t have to unless you earn less than 1.25x of minimum wage).
I’m wondering what your opinion/guess is (not legal advice) on whether we’ll need to wait for the award to be updated, or can just go to our employers and say: hey, I’m working 38 hours unless you want to pay me overtime.
I was part of my union, but since engineers are barely in the union, being part of a Professionals Australia (the union for my industry) was kind of a waste of time, and I tried many times to get in touch with their organiser team to push membership in my company to not avail.
Since then I let it lapse because I thought they were doing a pretty bad job, since you can’t have solidarity by yourself. In any case, that’s why I can’t ask them
[1] Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Penalty and Overtime Rates) Bill 2025:
This is not yet law.
Ammends this act: [2] Fair Work Act 2009: https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2009A00028/latest/text