Pub­li­ca­tions

Jul 9, 2018

The AHRC and Crim­i­nal Record Dis­crim­i­na­tion: A Tooth­less Tiger

The recent AHRC report into dis­crim­i­na­tion in employ­ment on the basis of crim­i­nal record, BE v Sun­corp Group Ltd [2018] AusHRC 121, has gar­nered sig­nif­i­cant media atten­tion and com­mu­ni­ty debate. What it serves to high­light is that the Aus­tralian Human Rights Com­mis­sion (AHRC) is a ​“tooth­less tiger” when it comes to dis­crim­i­na­tion…

Jun 26, 2018

Sala­cious facts, impor­tant principles

The atten­tion an unfair dis­missal case receives is some­times pro­por­tion­ate to how sala­cious the under­ly­ing facts con­sid­ered in the case are as opposed to the impor­tance of any legal prin­ci­ples that emerge. Hav­ing said that, an inter­est­ing fac­tu­al matrix (which some­times results in a ​“tabloid” or ​“click­bait” treat­ment of a case)…

Jun 5, 2018

Break­ing up is hard to do — Com­mu­ni­cat­ing ter­mi­na­tion of employment

HARD CON­VER­SA­TIONS Two of the hard­est con­ver­sa­tions to have with any­one are end­ing a rela­tion­ship and ter­mi­nat­ing employment. On the for­mer, the eti­quette guide Debret­t’s gives this guid­ance on the appro­pri­ate method of communication: “Always meet up with your (soon-to-be-ex) part­ner; email and text are a sav­age and bru­tal mode of rela­tion­ship tor­ture”…

May 8, 2018

“Your employ­ee offend­ed me. What are you going to do about it?”: Employ­ee Social Media Conduct

A Com­plaint is Made It’s hard­ly a start­ing or nov­el obser­va­tion that social media plat­forms like Twit­ter and Face­book are not always exem­plars of cour­te­ous, respect­ful dis­cus­sion and debate. Exchanges can often descend into insults and crude ad hominem attacks. On occa­sion these exchanges will end with one of the par­ties threat­en­ing…

Apr 26, 2018

The First Cat­e­go­ry 1 WHS Pros­e­cu­tion in New South Wales: The Mean­ing of ​“Reck­less”

The recent deci­sion of the Dis­trict Court in Stephen James Orr v Cud­al Lime Prod­ucts Pty Ltd; Stephen James Orr v Simon Shan­non [2018] NSWDC 27 is the first to deal with a cat­e­go­ry 1 pros­e­cu­tion in New South Wales under the Work Health and Safe­ty Act 2011 (NSW) (Act). Cat­e­gories of Offences There are…

Apr 9, 2018

What’s in a Name? Job Titles and Mod­ern Award Coverage

The Name Game Amus­ing arti­cles appear on a reg­u­lar basis about the renam­ing of par­tic­u­lar occu­pa­tions in an effort to make them seem more grand or impor­tant than they have been tra­di­tion­al­ly regarded. Some exam­ples that have been cit­ed include renam­ing ​“Bar Atten­dant” to ​“Bev­er­age Dis­sem­i­na­tion Offi­cer”, ​“Labour­er” to ​“Mor­tar Logis­tics Engi­neer”, ​“Garbage…

Apr 4, 2018

Car allowance deci­sion dri­ves unfair dis­missal access

In the recent deci­sion of Sam Tech­nol­o­gy Engi­neers Pty Ltd v Mr Andrew Bernadou [2018] FWCFB 1767 the Full Bench of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) con­sid­ered (as part of an appeal) the issue of how to treat car allowances for the pur­pose of deter­min­ing the annu­al rate of earn­ings for…

Mar 9, 2018

Swear­ing in the work­place: The legal position

The recent Full Bench deci­sion of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) in Illawar­ra Coal Hold­ings Pty Ltd T/A South32 v Matthew Gosek [2018] FWCFB 749 (Illawar­ra Coal), which gar­nered exten­sive media cov­er­age, has once again put the spot­light on the issue of swear­ing by employees. Swear­ing in the work­place is more com­plex…

Feb 13, 2018

Work­place Rela­tion­ships: The Legal Position

With recent devel­op­ments in Aus­tralian pol­i­tics, and the con­tin­ued focus on the inter­na­tion­al #MeToo move­ment, a top­ic that is present­ly being wide­ly dis­cussed is that of work­place relationships. There is a com­mon per­cep­tion that they are now, in all cas­es, imper­mis­si­ble. A few media com­men­ta­tors have lament­ed that they met their part­ner at…

Feb 8, 2018

Lack of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean unfair dismissal

In arti­cles and pre­sen­ta­tions on unfair dis­missal the impor­tance of pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness is a recur­ring theme.  This reflects sec­tions 387 (b) and (c ) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) which stip­u­late that, in con­sid­er­ing whether it is sat­is­fied that a dis­missal was harsh, unjust or unrea­son­able, the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC)…