Doctors in Training
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Annualised Salary – Have You Been Offered One For 2011?
AMA Victoria Senior Industrial Relations Adviser Andrew Lewis looks at a significant shift in the regulatory landscape that has the potential to affect hundreds of registrars. If you are being offered an annualised salary contract, read on.
Employment offers are on their way for the 2011 contract year. For registrars in particular and doctors in training (DiTs) generally, a major change in the law has substantially rewritten the rules applying to annualised salaries – also referred to as ‘rolled up’ rates.
On 1 January 2010, it became illegal for a hospital to offer an annualised salary as ‘sign on’ condition of employment. It remains the case that it is illegal to offer a contract that pays less than the total available under the AMA Victoria DiT Agreement 2008.
DiTs are reminded of AMA’s negotiated $293,000 settlement with Royal Melbourne Hospital on behalf of five members, reported in the Herald Sun on 7 October 2007. In that dispute, each member had been directed to work under annualised salary contracts that substantially undermined the AMA Agreement’s terms and conditions. If you have been offered or have signed an annualised salary for 2011, you should read on – and seek advice from AMA Victoria.
One of the many features of AMA Victoria’s comprehensive employment entitlement member package (i.e. the web-based and published AMA DiT Agreement resources and the wage calculator) are the boxed notes inserted throughout the DiT Agreement’s terms and conditions clauses. The notes serve to debunk misunderstandings or express complex entitlements in an easy-to-understand way.
One of the boxed notes relates to Clause 9 of the DiT Agreement: Individual Flexibility Arrangements (IFAs). IFAs have not only replaced annualised salaries and rolled up rates but in two key ways have fundamentally changed their style and operation. The box note from Clause 9 of the AMA Agreement explains the first important issue:
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AMA Note: IFAs cannot be offered as an employment contract ‘sign on’ condition. Once an employment relationship is established, DiTs may then choose to agree to an IFA. |
The registrar is in charge of the IFA process. The choice falls to the registrar as to whether to accept an IFA or continue under the DiT Agreement. AMA Victoria has an enshrined right to assist IFA negotiations if a member requests, and no coercion can be applied to encourage the registrar to sign up. (Refer to the article on adverse action in June vicdoc. This is also linked to from the ‘General Rights and Responsibilities’ summary section of the web-based agreement package.)
The second issue, but in a practical sense potentially the most important issue, is that it is now also illegal for an IFA offer (or annualised salary offer in old parlance) simply to prescribe a single annual amount in a contract that will then constitute the registrar’s fortnightly pay. Instead, and only after the employment relationship has been established, a hospital seeking to offer an IFA can only do so by proving, in writing via the method and timeframe prescribed under Clause 9 of the Agreement, that the amount offered is at least one dollar more than what is guaranteed under the DiT Agreement.
Given the variability of many entitlements – particularly, on-call, re-call and some overtime – it is noted that a hospital’s onus to prove that an IFA offer is legal will often be a tricky proposition. If the hospital’s calculations can’t show that the DiT Agreement guarantee is exceeded by at least one dollar, the IFA is illegal.
If you have a sense of your 2011 workload, it might be prudent to use the AMA Victoria online Wage Calculator based on your anticipated roster (for ordinary, penalty and overtime hours) and on-call and re-call, to compare your contract offer rate to the AMA DIT Agreement entitlements. A Wage Calculator-predicted underpayment, combined with the issues this article explains, offers members a powerful opportunity to achieve change and enforce compliance.
Members should regard IFAs as a positive protection of the entitlements AMA Victoria has negotiated on their behalf without limiting their rights to tailor individual relationships to meet the needs of a particular unit or personal circumstance. For hospitals that have in the past relied on annualised salaries as a normal form of engagement, the law has changed – so their employment practices must also change. The Fair Work Ombudsman is available to AMA where we believe the offering of annualised salaries is continuing and where members believe investigation is warranted.
Members who have received or signed annualised salary offers are welcome to seek advice from the AMA Victoria Workplace and Advocacy Unit on (03) 9280 8722. The web-based Agreement package can be accessed from the Member Zone of www.amavic.com.au.
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