Victorian Consolidated Legislation

Long Service Leave Act 1992 - SECT 62

Meaning of continuous employment

62. Meaning of continuous employment



(1) This section sets out several situations in which an employee is to be
regarded, for the purposes of this Division, as having been continuously
employed even though in a strict legal sense it could be said that the
employee's employment was interrupted.

(2) An employee's employment is to be regarded as being continuous despite-

   (a)  the taking of any annual leave or long service leave;

   (b)  any absence from work on account of illness or injury;

   (c)  any other absence from work approved by his or her employer (paid or
        unpaid), including carer's leave but not including adoption, maternity
        or paternity leave;

   (ca) the taking of any period of adoption, maternity or paternity leave
        (paid or unpaid), not exceeding-

   (i)  12 months; or

   (ii) any longer period-

                (A)  specified in the employee's employment agreement; or

                (B)  to which the employee is entitled under Division 6 of
                     Part 7 of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 of the
                     Commonwealth, as continued in force under the Fair Work
                     Transition Act; or

                (C)  to which the employee is entitled under the National
                     Employment Standards within the meaning of the
                     Commonwealth Fair Work Act;

   (d)  any interruption or ending of the employment by the employer if the
        interruption or ending is made with the intention of avoiding
        obligations in respect of long service leave or annual leave;

   (e)  in the case of an employee performing duties in relation to assets of
        a particular kind, any absence from work arising solely because of a
        transfer to which section 60(6) applies of those assets from one
        employer to another employer;

   (f)  any interruption arising directly or indirectly from an industrial
        dispute;

   (g)  the dismissal of the employee, but only if he or she is re-employed
        within a period not exceeding 3 months after his or her dismissal;

   (h)  the standing-down of the employee on account of slackness of trade;



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(3) If the employment of an employee who was apprenticed to an employer is
continued by the employer within 12 months after the completion of the
apprenticeship, the period of the apprenticeship is to be counted as part of
the continuous employment of the employee with that employer.

(4) Subsection (3) applies regardless of whether the continuation occurred
before or after the commencement of this Division.

(5) For the purposes of this Division, the continuous employment by an
employer of an employee who is employed by the employer at the commencement of
this Division is to be regarded as starting at the actual day (before the
commencement of this Division) of that employment.