A senior member of the Fair Work Commission has told employers they need strong workplace conduct policies and grievance procedures and should select line managers with good interpersonal skills, to help them prevent bullying claims.
A new report from a major employment law firm predicts that the Senate will pass the Abbott Government's Fair Work Act and building industry amendments, suggests the next reforms will be limits on industrial action and productivity requirements for enterprise agreements, and highlights the lower than expected activity in the FWC's anti-bullying jurisdiction.
An employer subject to a bullying claim has told the Fair Work Commission that the new laws need a "filtering" mechanism to protect "innocent parties" from their abuse.
The Fair Work Commission has refused to suppress the name of an employer and an individual subject to a bullying claim, but has warned the employee that its ruling is not a green light to publicly reveal their identity before the hearing.
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.
