Who is in? Who is out? Scope Orders Under The Fair Work Act

The history of collective bargaining shows that it has not been unusual for the bargaining parties involved to disagree about the scope of coverage that a particular collective agreement should have, such as the classes or groups of employees to be covered.

Coverage disputes have revolved around a number of issues, such as:

• the appropriateness of covering in the one agreement both non-management employees and employees with significant management functions;
• whether all operational employees should be covered by a single enterprise agreement regardless of geographical or operational separateness or whether several agreements based on geographical or operational separateness is appropriate.