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.
Summoning an employee to a dismissal meeting is a high stress situation. Get it wrong and an employer can end up facing an expensive unfair dismissal claim.
An employer has found out the hard way, the risks associated with failing to protect a worker from systematic workplace bullying and sexual harassment.
Rather than taking a worker’s complaint seriously, the employer failed to address issues which a Court later considered could have been avoided by “relatively simply means”.
When two employees engage in workplace warfare, the employer’s business can become major collateral damage.
A recent unfair dismissal case showcases a clever framework adopted by an employer in an attempt to end a workplace dispute.
As the dispute worsened, one of the workplace disputants even goaded her employer to sack her.
Was the employer being lured into a carefully laid trap?
Did the employer fall for it?
Read on to find out…
A recent Stop Bullying Order by the FWC serves as warning to employers of the broader burden that an order could impose on their workplace and potentially, their management prerogative.
The FWC’s Order not only restricted the workplace interaction between the parties, it went so far as to restrict work attendance times and face-to-face communication.
Read on for our analysis of the FWC’s Order and our tips for preventing it happening to you.
In a recent article, we profiled an unfair dismissal case where the Fair Work Commission had to consider whether a worker swearing at the boss was okay.
In the tradition of ‘truth at times being stranger than fiction’, we now profile a dismissal case involving a boss telling a worker to “F*** off”.
Is it okay for the boss to lose their cool and swear at a subordinate?
What if the boss shows regret later on?
Does it matter if the worker had exhibited a “belligerent, uncooperative attitude” for some months?
Did the boss’s actions amount to an instant sacking?
The FWC had to wrestle with these issues and more …
