Pub­li­ca­tions

Dec 17, 2019

Our most pop­u­lar arti­cles pub­lished dur­ing 2019

We are almost at the end of 2019, and with the end of a year comes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on our most pop­u­lar arti­cles pub­lished dur­ing the year:Deeds of Release and their effec­tive­ness – update 2019 | Richard Ott­ley | Employ­ment LawFair Work Com­mis­sion – When will the Full Bench enter­tain an…

Oct 17, 2019

Fair Work Com­mis­sion – When will the Full Bench enter­tain an appeal?

A ques­tion often asked by employ­ers fac­ing an unfair dis­missal claim is, what hap­pens if the mat­ter can­not be set­tled? Whilst the vast major­i­ty of unfair dis­missal cas­es are resolved at con­cil­i­a­tion, some pro­ceed to a hear­ing. On rare occa­sions they find their way from a hear­ing before a sin­gle Com­mis­sion­er to the…

Sep 2, 2019

Personal/​carers leave — how it should be cal­cu­lat­ed- lat­est devel­op­ments- August 2019

Cal­cu­lat­ing employ­ee enti­tle­ments can be com­plex and demand­ing at the best of times, how­ev­er the deci­sion of the Full Court of the Fed­er­al Court in Mon­delez v Auto­mo­tive, Food, Met­als, Engi­neer­ing, Print­ing and Kin­dred Indus­tries Union known as the Aus­tralian Man­u­fac­tur­ers Work­ers Union (AMWU) [2019] FCAFC 138 will, unless dis­turbed, add…

Aug 12, 2019

Deeds of Release and their effec­tive­ness – update 2019

Intro­duc­tion Releas­es and in par­tic­u­lar, deeds of release, play a sig­nif­i­cant role in resolv­ing dis­putes across a wide range of issues and at dif­fer­ent stages in their evo­lu­tion. It is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion to have, as the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a release, that it will pro­vide cer­tain­ty going for­ward and that the per­son pro­vid­ing the…

Jul 3, 2019

Work­place Sur­veil­lance Act 2005 (NSW) Admis­si­bil­i­ty of evi­dence unlaw­ful­ly obtained- lat­est developments

When it comes to the ques­tion of work­place sur­veil­lance, there are some employ­ers who are not aware of the impli­ca­tions of applic­a­ble work­place sur­veil­lance leg­is­la­tion, and who dis­cov­er its sig­nif­i­cance only when a chal­lenge is made to evi­dence secured through work­place sur­veil­lance activ­i­ties. In NSW, it is the require­ments of the…

May 8, 2019

Change the rules – which ones? What busi­ness­es need to know about Labor’s employ­ment policy

The Fed­er­al Elec­tion is less than two weeks away and the Aus­tralian Labor Par­ty (Labor), has announced a robust and ambi­tious reform agen­da. With­in this reform agen­da are key changes to the Aus­tralian Fair Work régime, and the ques­tion aris­es as to how will these changes impact Aus­tralian busi­ness­es if Labor…

Apr 8, 2019

Unfair Dis­missal – Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty no excuse for fail­ure to con­sult on redundancy

A recent deci­sion in the Fair Work Com­mis­sion has shone a light on a dilem­ma which employ­ers face when man­ag­ing redun­dan­cies in the con­text of a con­fi­den­tial busi­ness acquisition.  The dilem­ma is, at what point in time should the employ­er dis­close to staff the impend­ing acqui­si­tion and its like­ly impact upon their con­tin­u­ing…

Dec 14, 2018

Mod­ern Award changes 2018 / 2019- Impli­ca­tions for employers

Employ­ers face the con­stant chal­lenge of try­ing to keep up with the pace of change to the indus­tri­al rela­tions land­scape. 2019 will prove to be no exception.  Fol­low­ing the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (FWC) four-year­ly review of Mod­ern Awards, there have been a wide range of changes to some key Mod­ern Awards, includ­ing…

Sep 6, 2018

Restraints of trade and cus­tomer connections

It is well estab­lished that restraints of trade in employ­ment con­tracts will not be enforced by a court if they are con­sid­ered to be unreasonable. Some­times a restraint of trade is deemed to be unrea­son­able because it oper­ates over too wide an area, or for too long a peri­od of time. Some­times a restraint…

Sep 5, 2018

Avoid­ing redun­dan­cy pay where the employ­er ​“obtains oth­er accept­able employ­ment” for the employ­ee: four recent cases

As most employ­ers will be aware, the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (Act) con­tains pro­vi­sions requir­ing busi­ness­es to pay eli­gi­ble employ­ees a set amount of redun­dan­cy pay where the employ­ee los­es their employ­ment due to their role being made redundant. What is per­haps less well known is, the pro­vi­sion at sec­tion 12…