Resolve a dispute
We can offer advice if you have concerns about a training contract or an apprentice or trainee not meeting their obligations.
Your Apprentice Connect Australia Provider can also provide advice.
Sometimes, you may be unable to resolve an issue with an apprentice or trainee. If this happens, you may be able to use our dispute resolution process.
Types of disputes we can help with include:
- you and your apprentice or trainee do not agree about cancelling their training contract
- the threatened dismissal of an apprentice or trainee
- you or your apprentice or trainee are not meeting training contract obligations.
We may investigate disputes raised via an authorised officer workplace visit. We may also have a formal meeting between the parties, called a ‘proceeding’.
After making enquiries, we can decide how to resolve the dispute. We could order the parties back to work or cancel the training contract.
You can resolve the dispute outside the formal process at any time.
Our dispute resolution policy and procedures have more information.
For issues relating to pay and conditions, contact Fair Work Australia(opens in a new window) or the Fair Work Ombudsman.
For occupational health and safety issues, bullying, harassment or exploitation, contact WorkSafe(opens in a new window).
What happens if we cancel or suspend your approval to employ an apprentice or trainee?
We may cancel your approval to employ apprentices or trainees if you fail to meet our requirements. We may also impose conditions on your ongoing approval.
We evaluate cases based on the level of risk to the apprentices and trainees. Each case is different.
Examples of high-risk actions that could lead to cancellation of approval.
Employers put their apprentices and trainees at risk. They are not supervising them properly and are not allowing them to attend training with their TAFE institution.
We have found that apprentices and trainees are being bullied and working in an unsafe environment, and an apprentice has suffered an injury.
We may also decide to impose conditions on your approval when we find non-compliance.
A company with a good record in one industry wants to hire apprentices in a different industry. But when an authorised officer checked, they found that the apprentices’ job duties didn’t match the required skills for their qualification. Because of this, we have decided that the company can still hire apprentices in Victoria but not in that specific industry. We have added a condition to the company’s approval to show this restriction.
Apply to be re-approved or have a condition removed
Employers can apply for re-approval at any time. We will consider the following:
- nature of offence
- time since the offence
- efforts to rehabilitate.
To reapply, you need to show that you have fixed the issues that led to the cancellation. We need to know that you have systems and processes to prevent non-compliance in the future.
We cancelled an employer’s approval because they didn’t pay apprentices and trainees the legal wage. To reapply, they had to give us documentation that showed that they:
- had rectified the underpayment
- acknowledged and accepted accountability for the error
- have processes to prevent it from happening again.
In some cases, we lift conditions without an application.
We placed a condition to limit an employer’s number of apprentices or trainees while investigating them. They can keep employing the current apprentices or trainees but can’t employ any new ones. Our investigation found that the employer did not breach regulatory requirements. So, we removed this condition and notified the employer.
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