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'Transferred' on-hire casual wins long service leave appeal

A labour hire company has been ordered to pay long service leave to a former casual, who it argued had transferred to a new labour supplier two months before he retired.

Programmed Integrated Workforce (PIW) failed to convince the Queensland Industrial Court that the long service leave should be paid by Randstad, which had employed the gardener after becoming the winning bidder for a longstanding contract previously held by PIW.

The Court heard that from June 2011 to August 2019, PIW provided temporary administration and trades labour hire services to Brisbane City Council. This involved supplying some 300 employees to work on 40 Council sites.

PIW employed the gardener on a "series of rolling contracts" from October 2011 until it lost the tender in July 2019. In that month, PIW emailed its workforce to say that if they wanted to retain their Council roles, they would be asked to transition to Randstad...