A part-time Registrar works Thursdays and Fridays totalling 16 hours per week. Occasionally, when other doctors are unavailable, the Practice Manager and the Registrar agree that the Registrar will work extra days. There is no formal documentation of this agreement to work extra days.
Should there be a recalculation of the Registrar’s accrual of annual leave and personal leave as working days exceed the documented work agreement of 16 hours per week?
The NTCER outlines your minimum employment terms and conditions
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Fairwork deems that employees gain four weeks of annual leave based on their ordinary hours of work – https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/annual-leave
Section 10.3 of the NTCER defines ordinary hours:
10.3 Ordinary Hours of work
The ordinary hours of the registrar are calculated as the time between commencing and finishing work each day. Ordinary hours do not include on-call time and meal breaks. Ordinary hours shall be worked in periods of not less than 3 hours and no greater than 12 hours on any one day. The ordinary hours will be agreed prior to the commencement of the term.
This is calculated pro-rata for part-time registrars as per section 10.8 of the NTCER:
10.8 Ordinary hours for part-time registrars
If the registrar is employed on a part-time basis, all the conditions in this agreement apply on a pro rata basis bearing in mind that College requirements must be met for educational release and teaching time.
This registrar and practice has negotiated hours beyond what is outlined in their employment agreement. Given this has not been provided in writing, we would suggest to do so to formalise things (at least an email trail with agreement about payment). These hours are classified as “Additional ordinary hours of work” as per section 10.9 of the NTCER:
10.9 Additional Ordinary Hours of Work
The registrar may agree to work additional ordinary hours by negotiation with the practice. Where this is done during the ordinary span of hours it shall be paid at the registrar’s ordinary hourly rate. Registrars may decline employer requests to work additional ordinary hours without penalty or disadvantage. It is noted additional ordinary hours are different to special circumstances as outlined in clause 16.1 Workload.
Therefore annual leave should accrue on these extra hours worked as they are still “ordinary hours”.
The key exceptions to this outlined in Fairwork are:
– no accrual of annual leave beyond 1.0 FTE (38 hours x 4 weeks per year) unless stated otherwise in the employment agreement.
– no accrual of annual leave on overtime unless stated otherwise in the employment agreement
In summary, this registrar’s annual leave should accrue on these negotiated additional ordinary hours of work.