WA Employment Contract Not Registered - What is the Notice Period Required?

[Eva M]

I have been in a lower management position for 10 months and my employment contract states that I must give 12 weeks notice. The agreement is not registered.

What is the notice period I must give my employer under Employment Law?

 

[Serge Gorval]

Assuming, for argument sake that you are a national system employee (although if you're based in WA and are not employed by a company, you would be governed by state laws). In accordance with the NES less than 12 months continuous service has a minimum notice period of 1 week.

Your contractual notice however is 12 weeks which suggests that if you do not provide the required notice and terminate the agreement, you would technically be in breach of the contract and the employer could seek damages.

Can you give a little more info regarding the situation, is the 12 weeks respective and mutual or just applicable to you ?

 

[Eva M]

Assuming, for argument sake that you are a national system employee (although if you're based in WA and are not employed by a company, you would be governed by state laws). In accordance with the NES less than 12 months continuous service has a minimum notice period of 1 week.

Your contractual notice however is 12 weeks which suggests that if you do not provide the required notice and terminate the agreement, you would technically be in breach of the contract and the employer could seek damages.

Can you give a little more info regarding the situation, is the 12 weeks respective and mutual or just applicable to you ?

I work for a smaller company who services 2 other companies. This company is owned by a big national. The integration has caused lots of problems. For example, they merged jobs before the integration to save money but now its not sustainable as I am doing 2 jobs for 3 companies.

I only signed an offer of employment not an employment contract as such, however it does state 12 weeks notice period. From my research this is very excessive. My agreement is not registered with Fair Work. The mother company has all their agreement registered and their general notice periods are 4 weeks. The company does not want to lose me but I had enough of the excessive workload of more than 45 hours per week and the effect it has on my health so I want to understand what is legally binding - the contract or what the NES states.

Thank you

 

[Eva M]

I would like to resign as quickly as I legally can, but my manager wants to hold me to the 12 weeks notice period. Another manager resigned around the same time than me and agreed to the 12 weeks - I only offered 9 weeks to help out of kindness but the situation has turned so bad that all staff (20 +) have extremely low morale.