employment consultant

Report One: Assignment 1 – (25%)

You are an employment consultant for a major university seeking to reshape its workforce to achieve a higher level of research productivity from its academic staff. The project team has floated with you the idea of gradually replacing existing staff who leave (and who held employment contracts under an Enterprise Agreement) with new staff who would actually be ‘independent contractors’ rather than ‘employees’. Note that there is no proposal to retrench or remove any existing academic staff; the plan is simply that all new staff would be ‘independent contractors’. (You may also assume that the existing Enterprise Agreement does not prevent this.)
You are asked to advise the University by writing a report on to the viability of this suggestion.
Your report should do the following:
•    Your report should begin by clearly outlining the question on which you have been asked to advise.

•    You should then discuss the legal rights and obligations that would be relevant to academics engaged by the University as independent contractors, as compared with those currently working as employees.

•    You should also identify the key practical advantages and disadvantages of each type of relationship, from the point of view of both the University and the academics in question.

•    You should illustrate your answer by giving typical examples of workers who have historically fallen into each category.

•    Your report is required to refer to relevant legislation and case law where useful to clarify your answers, especially in the second part of your answer.

•    Finally, your report should provide a balanced recommendation (or recommendations) as to whether this is a viable option for the University to pursue. It would be appropriate at this point to consider whether there are any ethical considerations that might modify your recommendations.

General Instructions:

This Assignment must be submitted via the Turnitin link on the Blackboard website for this unit. Assignments will not be accepted, and will not be marked, if they are submitted in any other fashion.

Due Date: MONDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER 2014 (by 5PM WST).

Late Assessments: As set out in the Assessment Manual, late submissions (without an extension) incur a penalty of 10% per day. Applications for Extension MUST be submitted before the due date, and must contain medical or other relevant evidence. Please use the required form – available online.  Assignments handed in more than seven (7) days late will not be marked.

Word Length: You should write a minimum of 2200 words in your answer. You may write up to 2600 words (including ALL footnotes) but any excess of that upper limit will result in penalties. You will lose 10% of the available marks for each 100 words in excess of the word limit.

Referencing Guide: Students should follow the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (3rd ed) for this assignment. (Please note that this is quite different to Chicago style referencing.) A short guide to this referencing style is available on the Blackboard site for this unit under the “Unit Materials section of the Blackboard site for this unit.  Alternately you can find information via the Curtin University Library Homepage.

Guidelines for Report Writing
Report writing uses similar principles and skills to those used when writing essays; however, the key differences are that reports include a (i) formal summary, (ii) a numbering system, and (iii) a set of recommendations. You should ensure that your report meets these requirements.
Recommendations are the most important section of the report as they indicate the action that you believe needs to be taken; action is often the main feature of the writing of the report.  Readers will be influenced to accept your recommendations by the strength and logic of the arguments you have presented in the discussion section of the report.
Since action is the purpose of the recommendations, they must be written in such a form as to invite specific action.  Recommendations do not offer reasons, (for these should have been given the discussion section) nor do they philosophise about attitudes and values.  They can only be made from argument that emerges out of the conclusions reached.

Please submit your assignment as a word document.