The Morrison Government has relied on Pauline Hanson's One Nation to defeat Labor and Greens amendments to the Respect@Work legislation that would have imposed a positive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment.
The FWC has granted external legal representation to an employer and one of its employees accused of bullying involving s-xual impropriety, after differentiating between matters where allegedly bullied workers are still employed and dismissal cases where in-house representatives can argue for the employer "as fiercely as they see fit".
The FWC has issued anti-bullying orders in a decision that highlights the workplace tensions that build from employees conducting business on their phones.
The FWC has asked the Morrison Government to delay its proposed new capacity to make anti-sexual-harassment orders to give it time to prepare for a flood of applications, in an echo of a call it made eight years ago before the introduction of the anti-bullying regime.
The Fair Work Commission will be able to make a "stop sexual harassment order" after a single incident under legislation introduced today to implement some of the recommendations from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins' Respect@Work report.
In a decision exploring legal privilege in anti-bullying cases, a FWC full bench has found an employer disingenuously misrepresented the purpose of an investigation to justify directing its operations manager to participate in a compulsory interview "at pain of dismissal".
An FWC full bench has quashed the decisions of a presidential member who refused to recuse himself before finding Regional Express executives bullied an engineer, holding he mistook legal principles and engaged in "entirely unjustified and inappropriate criticism".
A senior FWC member has accused the chair of budget airline Regional Express of acting as the "puppet-master" of a general manager held, along with his deputy and a HR advisor, to have bullied an engineer targeted in the company's media releases.
A barrage of "thuggish" texts sent by the partner of a worker alleging harassment and bullying did not justify her dismissal, the FWC has found, describing the employer's attempt to vacuum-seal its investigation of her claims as both unreasonable and unrealistic.
The HSU has struck back at a former organiser's age discrimination claim, saying she inappropriately made a secret recording and revealed at a divisional council meeting that she'd call "rape rape rape" if ever left alone with any manager who bullied or intimidated her.
