It’s bushfire season and hardly a day goes by seemingly without a news story about out‑of‑control bushfires.
Many workplaces have volunteer firefighters in their midst and employers can be unsure of what to do during bushfire season.
Employers need to be across the workplace laws regulating when volunteer firefighters can be absent from work.
An employer who gets it wrong can be faced with an expensive legal claim in the Fair Work Commission.
Picture this. It is Monday morning and the phone rings.
You are told that over the weekend one of your employees, whilst a spectator at a sporting event, loudly heckled a star player.
Worse still, the employee then went on to initiate a ‘twitter war’ with the player, who happens to have over 2 million twitter followers.
You find out it is ‘all over the internet’ and the employee’s twitter account identifies him as your employee.
Well, a similar situation confronted an employer this year.
What if it happened to you? What action could you take? Read on to find out…
