News

Preference for ‘Asian staff’ costs Employer $12K

A long-term casual shop assistant has been awarded in excess of $10,000 compensation for her dismissal earlier this year, which the Fair Work Commission (FWC) found to be “disgraceful and grossly unfair” and likely impinged upon anti-discrimination laws which could leave the employer open to “other civil proceedings, for which civil penalties might apply”.

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Morrison Government Seeks to Appeal Personal Leave Decision

The Morrison Government has announced that it will seek leave in the High Court to appeal the Full Federal Court decision in Mondelez v AMWU & Ors, which dealt with how personal/carer’s leave should be calculated under the Fair Work Act.

UPDATE: On 13 December 2019, the High Court granted both the Morrison Government & the employer, Mondelez Australia Pty Ltd, special leave to appeal the Federal Court decision.

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Entitlement to Personal Leave – Full Court rules on Test Case

UPDATE: On 13 December 2019, the High Court granted both the Morrison Government & the employer, Mondelez Australia Pty Ltd, special leave to appeal the Federal Court decision. The appeal was subsequently heard before the High Court early in July 2020 and on 13 August 2020, a majority High Court set aside the Federal Court’s decision. Get up to speed on the most recent developments in our related article here.

On 21 August 2019, a Full Federal Court issued a long-awaited decision of enormous significance within the industrial relations landscape, ruling that the annual entitlement to “10 days of paid personal/carer’s leave” contained within the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) is to be interpreted as 10 “working days” for all permanent employees. This entitlement to 10 “working days” per year also extends to part-timers, regardless of the number of hours or days they work per week.

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4 Yearly Review of Modern Awards: Progress Update

The 4 Yearly Review of Modern Awards continues before the Fair Work Commission (FWC) though there has been little activity of note to commence 2019. After a swathe of amendments – including unpaid family & domestic violence leave and casual conversion – were pushed through in the second half of 2018, the first half of this year has yielded little more than some “plain language” re-drafting of the redundancy clause in a number of modern awards. This is despite FWC President, Justice Iain Ross, indicating over a year ago that he was “reasonably confident” the review process (which commenced in 2014) would be largely completed by the end of 2018 with a “substantial majority” of the new instruments expected to come into force in the first quarter of 2019.

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Thousands in compensation for “unnecessarily callous”, “disgraceful” dismissals by text

Two recent decisions of the Fair Work Commission (FWC) have reiterated the importance of avoiding termination by any other means than face-to-face, with the sacked workers in both instances being awarded compensation for their dismissals described as “repugnant” and “grossly unfair”.

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