Fair Work Act 2009

This Subdivision does not prevent an employee from performing work for the employee’s employer on a keeping in touch day while the employee is taking unpaid parental leave. If the employee does so, the performance of that work does not break the continuity of the period of unpaid parental leave.

A day on which the employee performs work for the employer during the period of leave is a keeping in touch day if:

the purpose of performing the work is to enable the employee to keep in touch with the employee’s employment in order to facilitate a return to that employment after the end of the period of leave; and

both the employee and the employer consent to the employee performing work for the employer on that day; and

the day is not within:

if the employee suggested or requested that the employee perform work for the employer on that day—14 days after the date of birth, or day of placement, of the child to which the period of leave relates; or

otherwise—42 days after the date of birth, or day of placement, of the child; and

the employee has not already performed work for the employer or another entity on 10 days during the period of leave that were keeping in touch days.

The employer will be obliged, under the relevant contract of employment or industrial instrument, to pay the employee for performing work on a keeping in touch day.

The employee’s decision whether to give the consent mentioned in paragraph (2)(b) is taken, for the purposes of section 344 (which deals with undue influence or pressure), to be a decision to make, or not make, an arrangement under the National Employment Standards.

For the purposes of paragraph (2)(d), treat as 2 separate periods of unpaid parental leave:

a period of unpaid parental leave taken during the employee’s available parental leave period; and

a period of unpaid parental leave taken as an extension of the leave referred to in paragraph (a) for a further period immediately following the end of the available parental leave period.

Subsection (1) does not apply in relation to flexible unpaid parental leave.