A jeweller who showered a manager with gifts and compliments, along with unrequited declarations of his affections and a slap on the bottom, is facing a record damages payout for sexually harassing her and victimising her for complaining about it, while his law firm is under fire for the "intimidatory and vindictive" tone of its correspondence.
Maurice Blackburn's head of employment and industrial law, Josh Bornstein, says damages for discrimination and harassment "remain persistently low" but he expects an upwards trajectory as their impact has been "laid bare" and expectations are now clearer.
The NTEU is calling for urgent change, after its latest survey found that "s-xual harassment, s-xism, and gender-based bias in tertiary education workplaces continues to be largely ignored and as a result remains firmly entrenched in our universities".
The Productivity Commission's leadership and human resources teams will undergo training in trauma-informed, victim-centred responses, as part of a suite of "significant" changes for the advisory body, after staff told an independent review that HR is a "black box" offering limited insight into actions to address complaints of inappropriate workplace behaviours.
An employer has fended off a new employee's adverse action claim after providing evidence of the numerous steps it took to address se-xual harassment and bullying allegations before her abrupt resignation.
An "openly gay" head chef sacked for allegedly molesting female co-workers has won $16,000 compensation, after the FWC found it "more than coincidental" that his employer decided that s-xual harassment provided a valid reason for summary dismissal before it emailed employees a survey full of loaded questions.
The FWC will consider the late unfair dismissal claim of a worker who believes his employer sacked him for alleged sexual harassment, after receiving evidence that five law firms rejected his case on one day alone.
The FWC has ordered the reinstatement of a dump truck driver dismissed after a "deeply flawed" investigation into allegations he exposed a female trainee to explicit images while passing around his phone.
Lawyers from the Redfern Legal Centre and Human Rights Law Centre are looking for s-xual harassment lawyers and industrial officers to complete surveys on the use of non-disclosure agreements in settling s-xual harassment claims, as part of a Sydney University program.
Federal Parliament has passed a trio of bills that establish the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service as an independent statutory HR agency and overhaul employment arrangements for parliamentary staff.
