Pub­li­ca­tions

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…

Aug 29, 2018

Abuse from the gen­er­al pub­lic: The oblig­a­tions of employers

Recent­ly a radio pre­sen­ter on ABC radio in Ade­laide broke down in tears on air after receiv­ing an abu­sive text mes­sage from a lis­ten­er which had been sent through the sta­tion’s text feed­back number. The text crit­i­cised the pre­sen­ter stat­ing that she had she had con­duct­ed ​“a piti­ful inter­view”, claimed what she said…

Aug 23, 2018

Casu­al Employ­ment: The new rules of engagement

A recent deci­sion of the Full Court of the Fed­er­al Court of Aus­tralia, Work­Pac Pty Ltd v Skene [2018] FCAFC 131 (Skene), held that an employ­ee who had been cat­e­gorised as a ​“casu­al” by the employ­er, Work­Pac, was not in fact a casu­al but rather a per­ma­nent employ­ee and, as a result, enti­tled…

Aug 7, 2018

The ​“Wein­stein Clause”: What is it? Could it be com­ing to Australia?

What is the ​“Wein­stein Clause”? The dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions about Har­vey Wein­stein and oth­er enter­tain­ment lumi­nar­ies have put sex­u­al harass­ment firm­ly on the agen­da, embold­en­ing vic­tims to come for­ward to share expe­ri­ences and pur­sue claims, lead­ing to the rise of the #MeToo and #Time­sUp move­ments inter­na­tion­al­ly, and #NowAus­tralia locally.  The lat­est con­se­quence of…