The Black Coal Award has an industry specific redundancy scheme.

The scheme provides 2 types of redundancy pay:

• severance pay
• retrenchment pay.

Both are paid at the employee’s base pay rate for their ordinary hours of work. It doesn’t include:

• incentive-based payments and bonuses
• loadings
• monetary allowances
• overtime or penalty rates
• any other separately identifiable amounts.

Severance pay

Severance pay is paid when an employer either:

• doesn't need an employee’s job to be done by anyone, or
• becomes insolvent or bankrupt.

Employees get 1 week of severance pay for each completed year of employment.

Retrenchment pay

Employees get paid retrenchment pay as well as severance pay when they're made redundant because of:

• changes in technology
• changes in supply and demand, or
• reducing coal reserves.

Employees get 2 weeks of retrenchment pay for each completed year of employment, up to a maximum of 30 weeks' pay.

Employees made redundant who have completed more than 15 years of employment on 20 March 2017 get 2 weeks of retrenchment pay for each completed year of employment. There's no maximum amount of retrenchment pay they can receive.

Who doesn’t get redundancy pay?

The following employees don’t get redundancy pay:

• employees employed for a specified period of time or for a specified task
• employees whose employer finds them work that:
  • they’re able to perform
  • is at least the same classification pay rate as their old job
  • is reasonably permanent
  • is in a similar location to their old job.

Notice period

All employees made redundant get a minimum of 4 weeks’ notice under the Black Coal Award.

Employees over 45 years old and have more than 5 years of continuous service get 5 weeks’ notice.

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