In a watershed anti-discrimination ruling, a full Federal Court has found community standards now demand higher compensation for non-economic loss in s--ual harassment cases, and has increased a former Oracle manager's overall damages award from less than $20,000 to $130,000.
The Fair Work Commission has warned employees who believe they are being bullied that they are not immune to normal expectations that they comply with workplace policies and practices.
A court has found that a law firm acted quickly to investigate claims of harassment by one of its solicitors and was entitled to treat emails from her stating that the employment relationship had broken down as a resignation.
The Fair Work Commission has thrown out a bullying claim by a government school teacher because neither the department nor state government are constitutional corporations.
The Fair Work Commission has dismissed an ANZ employee's application for an anti-bullying order, finding that his dismissal by the bank after he lodged his claim meant that he had no reasonable prospects of success.
A major law firm says the FWC's first ruling on the merits of a bullying application should calm employers' fears about the new jurisdiction, claiming that the tribunal has adopted "an extremely broad" interpretation of the exemption for reasonable management action.
In its first substantive ruling on the merits of an application under the new bullying jurisdiction, the Fair Work Commission has fleshed out the concept of "reasonable management action" in rejecting a manager's claim that she had been subjected to repeated unreasonable treatment by two of her subordinates.
The Federal Court has ruled that the MUA took adverse action against five port workers when it distributed a poster calling them scabs for refusing to take part in a protected strike, finding its contents were worse than defamatory and invited the conclusion that they were "devoid of human dignity".
The FWC's new anti-bullying jurisdiction is likely to subject the "largely unregulated" workplace investigations industry to long-overdue scrutiny, and might give rise to questions about whether employees can lawfully refuse employer directions to cooperate, according to Maurice Blackburn principal Josh Bornstein.
The Fair Work Commission has rejected an anti-bullying application from a paid carer, ruling he was not a "worker" under the new laws, while also outlining other arrangements that would fall outside the jurisdiction.
