Pub­li­ca­tions

Jul 8, 2019

Ter­mi­na­tion of employ­ment by SMS fails the fair­ness text

Tex­ting Times for Employers In two recent unfair dis­missal deci­sions, the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) has con­demned the prac­tice of ter­mi­nat­ing employ­ment by text message.  In the deci­sion of Kurt Wal­lace v AFS Secu­ri­ty 24 7 Pty Ltd (U2019/1622), Com­mis­sion­er Cam­bridge con­sid­ered the sub­mis­sion by the employ­er in respect of a ter­mi­na­tion by text, which was…

Jun 26, 2019

The Cur­rent State of Play in the Israel Folau Case

What pro­ceed­ings has Israel Folau initiated? It has been wide­ly report­ed that Israel Folau has com­menced pro­ceed­ings with the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) alleg­ing a breach of sec­tion 772 of the Fair Work Act (Act) for unlaw­ful ter­mi­na­tion of his employ­ment with Rug­by Aus­tralia (RA) on the grounds of reli­gion. Unlike court…

May 30, 2019

The prop­er scope of the anti-bul­ly­ing jurisdiction

Strong Words from the FWC Bench In the recent deci­sion of Tan­ka Jang Kar­ki [2019] FWC 3147, which dealt with an appli­ca­tion to the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) for a stop bul­ly­ing order, Deputy Pres­i­dent Sams took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express dis­qui­et about the way in which some appli­cants use the anti-bul­ly­ing…

May 13, 2019

Fair Work Com­mis­sion rules out new approach to indi­vid­ual dispute

A New Approach Sec­tion 576(2)(aa) of the Fair Work Act (Act) con­fers upon the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) the func­tion to pro­mote ​‘coop­er­a­tive and pro­duc­tive work­place rela­tions and pre­vent­ing dis­putes’. Pur­suant to this pro­vi­sion, the FWC has imple­ment­ed a juris­dic­tion called ​‘New Approach­es’, which has the aim of assist­ing employ­ers, employ­ees and…

Feb 11, 2019

Valen­tine’s Day in the Workplace

Valen­tine’s Day, the cel­e­bra­tion of romance and roman­tic love, takes place annu­al­ly on Feb­ru­ary 14. While many assid­u­ous­ly avoid what they con­sid­er to be a crass com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of inti­mate rela­tion­ships, oth­ers embrace with rel­ish the oppor­tu­ni­ties it presents to either affirm or pur­sue romance. There has been some recent media cov­er­age (usu­al­ly with…

Jan 29, 2019

Using the Anti-Bul­ly­ing Juris­dic­tion of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion for Sex­u­al Harass­ment Matters

The Lim­i­ta­tions of the AHRC Sex­u­al Harass­ment Jurisdiction Com­men­ta­tors (both lay and expert) have recent­ly lament­ed that the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) does not have a spe­cif­ic juris­dic­tion to expe­di­tious­ly deal with sex­u­al harass­ment complaints. Instead, the usu­al approach in sex­u­al harass­ment mat­ters (in the fed­er­al juris­dic­tion) is to lodge a com­plaint with…

Jan 15, 2019

An Employ­ee’s Com­mute Thwarts an Employ­er Com­mut­ing Redun­dan­cy Pay

In the recent Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) deci­sion in Aus­tralian Footwear T/A Diana Fer­rari [2018] FWC 7864 the employ­er, a busi­ness trad­ing under the name Diana Fer­rari, applied to the FWC to vary the redun­dan­cy amount payable to an employ­ee, Ms Tzortzis, whose employ­ment was ter­mi­nat­ed on the basis of redun­dan­cy…

Dec 20, 2018

A Real Deal: An Unfair Dis­missal Set­tle­ment Goes Wrong

We had a deal! An employ­er asserts an unfair dis­missal case has been set­tled. The Appli­cant con­tends no such set­tle­ment has tak­en place. How can the employ­er resolve the matter?  One avenue poten­tial­ly open to employ­ers is sec­tion 399A of the Fair Work Act (FW Act) which is in the fol­low­ing terms: “Dis­miss­ing…

Oct 29, 2018

Reheat­ed Retweets: The Sig­nif­i­cance of a ​‘Retweet’ in Employment

The CFM­MEU Case In a recent case of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) (Con­struc­tion, Forestry, Mar­itime, Min­ing and Ener­gy Union-Con­struc­tion and Gen­er­al Divi­sion, Queens­land North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Divi­sion­al Branch [2018] FWC 6462), a ​‘retweet’ by a mem­ber of the FWC, Senior Deputy Pres­i­dent Ham­berg­er, formed the basis of a sub­mis­sion by the Con­struc­tion, Forestry, Mar­itime…

Oct 22, 2018

Com­pet­ing Con­sid­er­a­tions: An Employ­ee and her ​‘Hob­by Business’.

In the cur­rent age where any organ­i­sa­tion, irre­spec­tive of size, can adver­tise to the world through the inter­net, the bar­ri­ers to entry for ​“micro” or ​“hob­by” busi­ness­es are low­er than ever. Increas­ing­ly, employ­ees are show­ing their inge­nu­ity and entre­pre­neur­ship by set­ting up their own hob­by busi­ness­es to the side of…