Employers must provide every new casual employee with a Casual Employment Information Statement (the CEIS) before, or as soon as possible after, they start their new job.
Small business employers should now have given all their existing casual employees (those employed before 27 March 2021) a copy of the CEIS while other employers have to give their existing casual employees a copy of the CEIS as soon as possible after 27 September 2021.
Note: a small business employer is an employer with fewer than 15 employees at a particular time.
The Fair Work Act has been amended to include a new definition of a casual employee – under the new definition, a person is a casual employee if they accept a job offer from an employer knowing that there is no firm advance commitment to ongoing work with an agreed pattern of work. Once employed as a casual, an employee will continue to be a casual employee until they either:
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become a permanent employee through casual conversion; or
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are offered and accept the offer of full-time or part-time employment; or
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stop being employed by the employer.