Employment Law
Modern Award changes will increase costs, risk and exposure
As part of the Modern Award Review there were changes made to some awards from 1 July 2020. These changes may have the effect of increasing exposure to business risk and costs associated with engaging employees covered under the following Awards: Miscellaneous Award Some changes have included: The clarification of which employees are covered by…
Read MoreGeneral Protections Complaint – Huge future economic loss $Pay-out due to COVID-19
$664,601.38 payout! A staggering amount was awarded to an employee for breach of the General Protections – a substantial portion of this was assigned to the difficulty the applicant would have in obtaining employment in the current COVID-19, pandemic effected environment. TheFederal Circuit Court (FCC) has recently awarded an employee compensation to the tune of…
Read MoreChallenging suspected falsified medical certificates
In Australia ‘sickies’ have become part of our identifiable culture. They are joked about with work mates and celebrated within social circles, but for businesses they are a serious problem, impacting both the productivity and profitability of an organisation. With a growing number of questionable medical certificates being used to access sick leave, many employers…
Read MoreThe High Income Threshold And Salary Reductions Resulting From COVID-19 – Does reducing salary avoid unfair dismissal applications?
In Unfair Dismissal Applications – an employee must demonstrate their annual rate of earnings at the time of dismissal were below the high income threshold prescribed by the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)[1] in order to be protected from unfair dismissal. The current high income threshold (applicable to all dismissals taking effect after 1 July…
Read MoreHow we can help? Ensuring Redundancies are ‘Genuine Redundancies’
Unfair Dismissal Applications – When an employee alleges their termination of employment was harsh, unjust or unreasonable, the Fair Work Commission (the FWC) is required to consider a number of preliminary matters[1] including whether the employee was a person protected from unfair dismissal. One of these matters is whether the employee’s dismissal was a case…
Read More3 Practical Legal Tips for HR Practitioners in Manufacturing to overcome legal obstacles
COVID-19, the pandemic has caused massive disruption to industry. Manufacturing has been no exception and although there have been a number of companies who have benefited from clients “going local” and others who have pivoted into other areas – hand sanitizers been an obvious one. Many HR professionals in Manufacturing companies are coming to grips…
Read MoreWhat can Business expect from the IR Roundtable? 4 Reforms potentially on the table
In recent times we have had a number of unique and challenging decisions come out of the Fair Work Commission – Skene and Rossato come to mind. We have also had a pandemic which has led to a number of changes to Modern Awards, directions and stand downs. New challenges have been forced on organisations…
Read More“The Personal Trainer” – Dual faceted employee and contractor relationships
The Fair Work Commission (FWC) was recently invited to consider a jurisdictional objection in a matter[1] involving a personal trainer who used the premises of a gym to conduct his own personal training business pursuant to a written Personal Training Agreement (PT Agreement). The PT Agreement required the personal trainer to pay sums of money…
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