Despite strong objection from industry, the Queensland’s Parliament today passed a Bill to make Christmas Eve a part-day public holiday – all work in Queensland after 6:00pm on 24th December will now ...

The Fair Work Commission has recently handed down a significant decision to approve two enterprise agreements for ALDI stores which included ‘loaded rates’, after being the only agreements of five not to ...

With “wage theft” being a hot topic politically, Parliaments around Australia have undertaken inquiries into the matter at a State level since 2018. Following inquiries into “wage theft” in Queensland, South Australia ...

With many Queensland and New South Wales residents displaced from homes due to large-scale bushfires and wide swathes of the country on high fire alert, many employers are contending with the impact ...

Businesses are experiencing an increase in chargeback fraud following changes to the transaction disputation rules of major card providers. In 2018, both Visa and MasterCard changed their transaction disputation rules to make ...

Despite legal protections against sexual harassment existing for some time, it remains an ever present issue in the workplace. The commonality of sexual harassment may be because what constitutes “sexual harassment” is ...

Last week the Queensland Government passed new laws that will change the state’s Workers’ Compensation scheme by introducing some greater responsibilities on employers and insurers, and expanding the scope of coverage for ...

The Federal Government has offered employers some clarity around recruiting applicants with criminal records, after the Australian Human Rights Commission (‘AHRC’) found that Suncorp discriminated against a job applicant with a record. ...

Televisions have become flatter, we’ve moved from typewriters to laptops, and now mobile phones have become our everything-in-one device which dominates communication and even some people’s lives. A number of apps and ...

Whether it’s a quarrelsome employee, a serial underperformer, or a casualty of automation, the stress of dismissing an employee doesn’t end on their last day of employment. It’s not until 3 weeks ...

The concept of redundancy is a reasonably straightforward one – the employer no longer requires the particular job occupied by an individual to be done by anyone. Case closed. The Fair Work ...

Our favourite Legal Beagles talk about the trials and travails of social media and workplace law, but will they ever learn to get along? Like, comment and subscribe to our National Retail Association ...

Cal and Al are back again, this week taking a look at the issue of swearing at work. What are the consequences of letting out an accidental curse word when you stub ...

The last major study into mental health in Australia by the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed that 15% of Australians had experienced an affective disorder like depression, while 26.3% have experienced an ...

In the current enforcement climate, it is valuable to note a recent case in which the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) was successful in obtaining an increase of fines on appeal to almost ...

Fair Work Commission losing patience over defective workplace investigations By Lucy Harper and Calum Woods, NRA Legal Please note, this decision was quashed by the Full Bench of the Commission on 11 November 2019. ...

When getting legless can lead to being jobless: lessons learned from after-work drinks By Thomas Parer and Lindsay Carroll, NRA Legal Employers and employees are starting to realise that grabbing some casual ...

Since its introduction in 2013, the Fair Work Commission’s anti-bullying jurisdiction has attracted its fair share of commentary. Of the 700 anti-bullying applications filed last year, a total of 53 proceeded to ...

It has been heralded as the test case on where to draw the line on the freedom to practise religion, and how much say an employer has in their employees’ personal lives. ...

From 1 July 2019, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Act 2018 came into effect. A response in part to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, ...

Playing musical chairs with an employment contract can be risky business. This usually happens when an employee doesn’t return a signed contract when starting a new job, and their employer allows them ...

Following a spate of recent announcements by the Fair Work Ombudsman, it seems the employment status of workers in the gig economy will continue to avoid the judicial scrutiny that many had ...

In what may be indicative of a growing trend in the trade union movement, Australia’s largest blue-collar unions outside the CFMMEU – United Voice and the National Union of Workers – are ...

After part-time employment, reasonable additional hours is one the most commonly misunderstood concepts for employers in the retail and quick service industries. In fact, even the question “how many additional hours would be ...

What category you choose to employ someone under (full-time, part-time or casual) has more implications than simply a cost analysis of annual/sick leave or casual loading. There’s more to think about than ...

The Fair Work Commission (per Deputy President Anderson) stated recently that a workplace investigation “is not a court of law or a quasi-judicial proceeding. It is an internal disciplinary process guided by ...

With the Corporations Amendment (Strengthening Protections for Employee Entitlements) Act 2018 (Cth) (the Amendment Act) taking effect last month, now is an apt time to reflect on how officers of a company are subject ...