New union-won rights at work: what you need to know

In the last two years, the union movement has won the biggest changes to workers’ rights in Australia in generations. These changes deliver new and improved rights that empower millions of workers. 

The scale and significance of these wins show what union members can achieve when we campaign and have a Labor government in power, ready and willing to support working people.

Most of these rights are already in effect, and union members are using them to win fairer and safer workplaces. Now is the time to learn what they are, why they are so important and how to make the most of them.

What were the changes to the law?

In the past two years, there have been five major changes to Australia’s main work law – the Fair Work Act 2009:

• Fair Work Amendment (Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Act 2022 
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Act 2022 
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Protecting Worker Entitlements) Act 2023 
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act 2023 
• Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024 

There has also been a change to the law on paid parental leave – the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010:

• Paid Parental Leave Amendment (More Support for Working Families) Act 2024 

What did these changes do?

Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave

This change introduced 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave for all workers.

Secure Jobs, Better Pay 

This change focused on improving job security, gender equality and workers’ right to request to work flexibly. It also simplified and strengthened how union members can use their collective voice to bargain for and win better pay and conditions.

Protecting Worker Entitlements 

This change brought in greater flexibility for workers taking unpaid parental leave and the entitlement to superannuation in the National Employment Standards. It also strengthened protections for migrant workers.

Closing Loopholes (No.1) 

This change delivered better protections for workplace delegates, labour-hire workers and independent contractors. It also strengthened rules to stop wage theft and industrial manslaughter, and improved work health and safety for certain workers.

Closing Loopholes (No.2) 

This change saw improved rights and more choices for gig workers and those in casual employment. It also set out to improve workers’ work-life balance with the introduction of the right to disconnect.

Paid Parental Leave 

This change broadens the availability and eligibility of the government’s paid parental leave scheme.

How can workers make the most of these changes?

Already a union member?

Reach out to your union for more specific information about how you and your workmates can use these rights in your workplace. 

Not yet a member of your union?

Joining your union will ensure you’re getting the new pay and conditions that you’re entitled to.

How can workers protect these rights?

Winning the new rights and protections is just the beginning – now is the time to use them; to embed and protect them. Because losing them again is a real possibility. 

Peter Dutton has already committed to turning secure jobs into casual jobs, repealing the right to disconnect and standing against minimum standards for gig workers. And leaked documents reveal that the Coalition’s agenda includes further changes to work laws that would send workers’ wages and rights backwards. 

These union-won workplace rights over the past two years have contributed to higher wage growth for workers – in fact, real wages over the past year have grown by the same amount as the total over nearly 10 years of the previous Coalition government. 

The Liberal Party have said themselves that low wages have always been a “deliberate design feature” of their policies and that real wage growth would be “the worst thing for Australians”. Their proposals would deliver exactly that.

The last thing workers need is another Liberal government committed to sabotaging wages and work rights in a cost-of-living crisis. We can’t let Petter Dutton and the Coalition send workers backwards.

Join the fight to protect these historic work rights from Dutton, and learn about them, share them, and use them (unions are using them already to win better pay and conditions!), so they become so embedded in our working lives that taking them away is unthinkable.