The Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) has issued a draft road safety remuneration order (draft Order) and statement on minimum payments for contractor drivers.

The Federal Court has revoked a decision made by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to approve the Swinburne University of Technology’s 2014 enterprise agreement (EA), due to the inclusion of casual or sessional employees in the voting process.

In February 2014 the University requested staff to vote in favour of the agreement, including individuals who had been engaged as sessional employees during the 2013 academic year. The University considered 2005 of the votes cast to be valid, and made an application to the FWC for approval based on a slim 57 majority votes in favour of the agreement.

In a recent case in the Federal Circuit Court an employer; Corrective Services New South Wales, was ordered to pay a former probation and parole officer employed by it the sum of $180,000 plus interest as a result of discriminatory treatment of her.  The employee suffered from Crohn’s Disease and took sick leave on a number of occasions.

According to the latest budget handed down last night from Treasurer Joe Hockey, penalty units (ie. fines) for breaching federal laws are set to rise from $170.00 to $180.00 (per unit) from 31 July 2015.

 The maximum penalty for a breach of the Fair Work Act 2009 is:

• 300 penalty units for a corporation; and
• 60 penalty units for an individual.

A delivery driver whose employment was terminated after he worked for his employer's customer during his annual leave, has been awarded $12,864 compensation after the Fair Work Commission found his dismissal was harsh, unjust and unreasonable.

Sladen Legal's Joanna Shields has written an article, published in the April edition of Prime Mover, which outlines the case of a moonlighting truck driver who was unfairly dismissed.

Following last year’s consultation process with employers and interest groups in relation to current impediments and opportunities for streamlining the workplace gender equality reporting process, the Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz, has announced a series of reporting amendments designed to ease the reporting obligations for employers.
No changes have been made to the gender equality framework under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Act).

The Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has handed down an important interpretive decision concerning when a worker is bullied “at work”, for the purposes of the workplace bullying provisions under the Fair Work Act 2009 (the Act).

Current working practices now shadow the traditional workplace model, through increased mobility, work done outside of normal hours and the prevalence of social media.  As a result, in recent years courts have been required to make findings about what performing work now looks like in the modern era.

From 1 January 2010, thousands of state and federal awards were subsumed into 122 modern awards as part of an award simplification process. To allow employers and employees time to adjust, many modern awards contained transitional provisions, allowing employers to phase-in new modern award entitlements over a period of time, including payments in relation to minimum wages, piece work rates, casual or part-time loadings, shift allowances and penalties payable for work done on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays. There were also transitional provisions in relation to accident make-up pay, district allowances, and higher redundancy pay.

“If you’re contracting out, and the price seems too good to be true, someone’s probably getting ripped off. And if it turns out to be the workers, and it turns out you half knew that, then you are in danger yourself of having been involved in a contravention”

These comments were made by Natalie James of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) last month after the workplace regulator settled its long running prosecution with retail giant Coles, in connection with the unprecedented ‘trolley collectors case’.  In an environment where outsourcing is prevalent and often complex, the prosecution of Coles has been a sobering reminder to the business community that lawmakers and regulators are sharpening their view on chain of responsibility.

The High Court of Australia has handed down its second significant decision on the interpretation of the adverse action provisions in the Fair Work Act 2009 (the Act).

In 2012 the High Court made a decision in the case of Board of Bendigo Regional Institute of Technical and Further Education v Barclay, which provided employers with guidance on what must be established to defend a claim that adverse action had been taken against an employee for a prohibited reason.  This case informed us that if the person who made the decision to sanction the aggrieved employee (such as a HR or operations manager) could provide cogent and credible evidence that no part of their decision involved a prohibited reason (such as participating in a lawful industrial activity), that would be sufficient to resist the employee’s claim.