On 14 December 2016, the highest safety fine for a single OHS offence in Victoria was delivered to Toll Transport in the County Court of Victoria. It involved Toll’s shipping service at Webb Dock in Port Melbourne. Background In 2014, a Toll stevedore was run over by a flat trailer and died. A flat trailer … Read more
By Clea Cole (Lawyer) and Claire Brown (Senior Associate) A truck driver has won back his job after being dismissed for misconduct which included making lewd, crude, sexist and Islamophobic comments – here is the decision in Goodall v Mt Arthur Coal Pty Ltd T/A Mt Arthur Coal [2016] FWC 4129. What happened? Goodall was … Read more
The NSW Supreme Court has again re-affirmed that gardening leave periods will be considered in assessing the overall reasonableness of post-employment restraints. In DP World Sydney Ltd v Guy [2016] NSWSC 1072, Justice White held that a restraint period of 3 months, which followed an earlier gardening leave period of 3 months was valid and … Read more
A recent Fair Work Commission (FWC) case has served as a reminder of what employers should not do when they are concerned that an employee can’t fulfil the inherent requirements of their job. Background In Rodney Billett v West Coast Council [2016] FWC 4252, 51 year old Rodney Billet, who had a largely unblemished employment … Read more
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) is required to conduct a 4 Yearly Modern Award Review (Review), and whilst this process is still occurring, the FWC has released a number of key changes as part of its Review which will impact on many major industries such as construction, manufacturing and banking. Whether these key changes have … Read more
UPDATED: CHANGE OF VENUE! We are pleased to say that due to the fantastic interest in the event, we have moved it to a larger venue – the RACV Club. (NB: Same date and time, but just at a different place). Where: RACV Club, Level 2, 501 Bourke St, Melbourne RSVP: To Jonah on 03 … Read more
As you may recall, last year in the Aurizon case the Fair Work Commission overthrew its previous orthodoxy that enterprise agreements were essentially very difficult to terminate in contested applications because the objects of the Fair Work Act almost always made it contrary to the public interest to do so. While at the time many … Read more
Do redundancy and redeployment obligations extend to considering work performed by agency labour workers? Yes they can! The commonly accepted orthodoxy up until 2014 was that only vacant internal positions needed to be considered for the purposes of redeployment opportunities inside the company or an associated entity when establishing the ‘genuine redundancy’ defence to unfair … Read more
Two recent FWC decisions where medical circumstances were advanced by employees in relation to extensions of time for their unfair dismissal applications raise interesting issues, especially given our recent seminar on managing ill, injured and absent employees. In Hickey v Australia Post, following medical retirement by Australia Post, Hickey argued his anxiety, which he said … Read more
