A Director of MCG Quarries was sentenced to 18 months in prison in May this year after a court found he failed his health and safety obligations resulting in the death of a young man who got tangled in a conveyor belt on a South Moranbah quarry in 2012. The court heard that, despite warnings […]
The lack of an immediate reason for an employee failing to turn up to work cannot be construed as ‘abandonment’ without being properly investigated. This message was recently enforced by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) who ordered Atlas Steel, a supplier of steel products, to pay $7,000 to an employee after mistakenly assuming they had […]
New model annualised wage clauses have been proposed for 19 modern awards covering industries including health, hospitality, mining, banking and legal services, as part of the Fair Work Commission’s (FWC) 4 yearly review of modern awards. The new clauses, initially drafted in February 2018, have been contested by employer groups, who claim they will impose […]
Victoria Police’s recent rejection of a detective’s request for flexible working arrangements was held to lack reasonable business grounds in a recent decision before the Fair Work Commission Full Bench (the FWCFB). The decision sheds light on the considerations employers must heed when faced with a flexible work request. The 57-year-old detective wished to “compress” […]
The precedent set by the WorkPac decision is that an employee labelled a casual worker may be entitled to annual leave under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), if (among other things) the employment arrangements displayed a regular pattern of hours, continuous work and there was a firm advance commitment to such work. One significant […]
Two enterprise agreements have been deemed defective by the Full Federal Court (FFC) after Aldi referred to themselves as “leader” rather than “employer” in their bargaining Notice (Notice) to employees about their representational rights. The FFC upheld the Fair Work Commission’s (FWC) decision and rejected Aldi’s submission that the word change was a “trivial matter”. […]
In important, breaking news, a comprehensive final report was released on 26 February 2019 on the first national review of the model Work Health and Safety laws, which was independently conducted by Marie Boland, the former Executive Director of SafeWork South Australia, in December 2018 (the Review). The Review includes 34 recommendations to amend legislation […]
For the first time, two employers in Australia have been sentenced to prison for breaching Australia’s WHS laws. Two recent cases involving deaths contributed to by employer negligence in the workplace illustrate the need to put safety at the fore of any business as a small business owner, and a Company Director, have both been […]
Labor’s pre-election commitments to amend the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (VIC) (the Act) announced in May last year, are set to be implemented after a landslide win in Victoria in November 2018. If implemented, the changes will increase the maximum fine for death caused by an employer’s negligence to nearly $16 million, making it […]
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) has recently held that a labour hire employee transferring ‘in house’ was protected from unfair dismissal after finding that the transfer constituted a “transfer of business” for the purposes of meeting the minimum employment period required to bring a claim for unfair dismissal, being 6 months, on the basis of […]