Employment and Migration Blog

You may find yourself on dangerous ground if you try to force an employee to sign a deed following their termination. In our latest Employment Blog, Senior Associate Anna Ford outlines what the Fair Work Commission considers to be forced when it comes to employees signing Deeds.

I was recently asked to comment on an article for "In the Black" magazine (a CPA publication) on 'what makes a successful redundancy' - and I thought I'd share a snippet of what I said...

Beware the consultation and redeployment issues when making employees redundant. For a redundancy to be outside the unfair dismissal regime, it has to be a "genuine redundancy." Whether a redundancy is genuine depends on whether there is consultation as required by an applicable award, and whether any reasonable options for redeployment are offered to the employee.

Surely that's OK, if I do it in my own time from my own computer with the maximum privacy settings and only to a select group of 70? Not when the comments are particularly offensive, and the group includes 11 work colleagues, even when the employee has the sensitivity to block the access of the relevant boss.

Continuing on last week’s theme that “Redundancy is not a panacea”, I saw a decision last week, made particularly interested by the ATO’s involvement both as employer and taxman, so that the A to the Q above could be “When the ATO says so.” An ATO employee negotiated a voluntary redundancy then asked the ATO to treat it as a “genuine redundancy” to get the tax breaks involved. The ATO refused. She went to the AAT to argue the issue, the ATO opposed it, and she lost.

Another of the top 10 from Booth's 101 Rules for avoiding unfair dismissal is " Redundancy is not a panacea ". This colourful story comes from a Qld discrimination case last month (Webb v Lightfoot) rather than unfair dismissal, but the principle is the same. Lightfoot ran a scaffolding business which employed Webb. When Webb had a back injury (reading between the lines, it seems Lightfoot doubted this), claimed workers comp, and sought light duties, Lightfoot ignored him. Webb persisted in seeking light duties. Lightfoot's reaction was:

The SMH reported on 20 June that Sally Berkeley, an ex-employee of Pacific Brands (ASX200 company, majority of board being women) has sued for $9m for bullying and discrimination. The claim, filed by Harmers, the lawyers who represented Fraser-Kirk’, is reported to be mainly for future loss of income, because of stress and panic attacks.