Following an inquiry into work arrangements in the labour hire industry, the Victorian Government has recently introduced the Labour Hire Licensing Bill 2017 (Bill). The Bill establishes a licensing scheme for labour hire providers and creates civil and criminal offences for breaches of the scheme. The stated object of the Bill is to prevent vulnerable … Read more

To view our summary of this year’s Top 10 Trends in Employment and Industrial Relations, click here. Read more

On 7 December 2017, the Australian Government took a further step towards whistleblower reform by introducing the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2017 into the Senate (‘Whistleblower Bill’). The Whistleblower Bill seeks to consolidate whistleblower protections in the corporate, financial and credit sectors into a single regime under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) … Read more

An independent review of mental health at work, commissioned by the Prime Minister, has been published. The Stevenson/Farmer review calls on employers to adopt six mental health core standards covering mental health at work plans, employee awareness and open communication, healthy work life balance, effective people management, and monitoring of mental health and wellbeing.  Further … Read more

The Court of Appeal has held that the EAT ruling in Efobi v Royal Mail Group (that it is not incumbent on the claimant in a discrimination claim to prove a prima facie case, summarised in our blog post here) is wrong.  The claimant does have the initial burden of showing a prima facie case … Read more

The Court of Appeal has overturned the EAT ruling in Royal Mail v Jhuti, although a further appeal has been filed.  The EAT had ruled that the reason for a dismissal can be the employee’s whistleblowing, even where the decision-maker is unaware of this, if their decision has been manipulated by a manager aware of … Read more

The EAT decision in Baker v Abellio London UK serves as a reminder that it is not a statutory requirement for an employer to obtain right to work documents from its employees (the production of such documents only provides a defence to employers should they engage an illegal worker), and therefore dismissal of an employee … Read more

In Rawlinson v Brightside Group, the EAT held that the duty of trust and confidence includes an obligation on an employer not to deliberately mislead an employee as to the real reason for dismissal.  In that case, the employer decided to dismiss an in house legal counsel due to his poor performance; rather than go … Read more