Pub­li­ca­tions

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)…

Jan 31, 2018

Prin­ci­pal Con­trac­tors: The Rules of Engagement

The role of prin­ci­pal con­trac­tor is crit­i­cal in man­ag­ing the work health and safe­ty risks on con­struc­tion projects. Even so, mis­un­der­stand­ings still arise as to the appli­ca­tion of the rules relat­ing to the engage­ment of prin­ci­pal con­trac­tors under the Work Health & Safe­ty Reg­u­la­tions 2017 (NSW) (WHS Reg­u­la­tions). (These rules are in…

Jan 19, 2018

Sex­u­al Harass­ment in the Post-Wein­stein Age What’s Next for Employers? 

The Post-Wein­stein Age The down­fall of one-time Hol­ly­wood heavy­weight Har­vey Wein­stein is increas­ing­ly look­ing like a sem­i­nal event, caus­ing a par­a­digm shift in the way sex­u­al harass­ment (and the bul­ly­ing and vic­tim­i­sa­tion that often accom­pa­nies such behav­iour) is addressed in the community. The Wein­stein alle­ga­tions opened the flood­gates, act­ing as a cat­a­lyst for numer­ous claims…