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New Modern Musicians Award Released

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Terry Noone
(Federal Secretary of the Musicians' Union of Australia)

Under the current Federal Government’s Industrial Relations system, all federal awards are to be replaced with new “modern” awards. One of the aims of this process is to reduce the number of federal awards. Industries have been dealt with in various stages and music is part of Stage 3. The modern awards for Stage 3 were released on Friday 4^th September however they will not actually take effect until the 1^st of January 2010.

The outcome for musicians has been mostly positive but there are some areas of concern.

Modern Awards will apply anywhere in Australia where the employer is a “corporation” for the purposes of the Australian constitution. Here is one definition of this:

Constitutional Corporation: Companies, associations and other bodies which have been incorporated are 'corporations'. Sometimes they will have Pty or Co or Ltd or Inc in their name. Whether they are constitutional corporations will depend on whether they can be classified as either 'trading' or 'financial' corporations. Most businesses that are companies will be constitutional corporations. However, if a corporation is a charitable or not-for-profit organisation it may not be a constitutional corporation.

Please note that this does not include sole traders, partnerships or individuals. Musicians employed by these will still be covered by the relevant state award. This situation will remain unless the states decide to hand over their Industrial Relations powers to the Commonwealth as Victoria did some years ago.

Two “Modern Awards” that include musicians in their coverage have been created:

1. LIVE PERFORMANCE AWARD 2010

(This award can be viewed at: www.airc.gov.au/awardmod/awards/live.pdf)

This replaces the following musicians’ federal awards:

Musicians’ General Award, 1998

Musicians’ Hotels Award 2001

Orchestral Musicians Award 2001

Musicians (Opera and Ballet) Orchestral Award 1998

And the live performance components of all state awards as they apply to “constitutional corporations”

Musicians’ rates and allowances in this new award remain mostly as they would previously have been under the old “General Award” once all the available safety net increases are factored in. The loading for casual employment has been lifted from 20% to 25%, this is in line with all other “Modern Awards”

The final version varies from the last pre-decision version in that archive recordings have been removed and recording and broadcasting allowances maintained. Both of these are consistent with submissions made by the MUA at the last hearing on this matter.

The rate for filming has been omitted, this may be merely an oversight - the Union is examining the process for remedying this apparent inconsistency.

2. BROADCASTING AND RECORDED ENTERTAINMENT AWARD 2010

(This award can be viewed at: www.airc.gov.au/awardmod/awards/broadcasting.pdf)

This replaces the following musicians’ federal awards:

Musicians’ (Casual Employment in Records for Sale to the Public) Award 2000

Musicians’ (Casual Employment in Television) Award 2000

Musicians’ Feature Film, Documentary, Telemovies and Television Mini-Series

Award 2000

And the recording and broadcast components of all state awards as they apply to “constitutional corporations”

Despite MUA submissions on this award, the three different rates for television, film and recording have been replaced by one rate (actually the middle one of the three previous!). This means a significant drop in the rate for film, a small increase in TV and status quo for recording. Interestingly the much higher rate for “Session Singers” was ignored when musicians’ rates were worked out.

There could well be a strong argument for going back to a proper work value analysis of these rates since they were never set as “properly fixed minimum rates” under the previous system.

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