If an employer is seeking to change your working hours, they must ensure they are acting within the confines of the law. This includes adhering to contractual obligations, engaging in appropriate consultation and ensuring that the change is not a result of any discriminatory reasons.
Many unrepresented employees contact the Fair Work Commission assuming that it will give them free legal advice. It does not. It does provide sound information usually about an Unfair Dismissal claim and how to make an Unfair Dismissal claim.
In short, the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) prevents an employee from taking or accruing any leave during a compensation period. Read on for exceptions to this law.
Advances in modern technology make it extremely easy to covertly record conversations in the workplace with managers or other employees. The Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic) and other legal precedence set limitations on when recordings can be used to support an employee’s case.
Find out your sick leave entitlements, and when disciplinary actions during sick leave are lawful.
You are not required to sign a warning letter and you should certainly not do so if you consider the warning to be unjust or unreasonable.
If you believe your employer has unfairly or unjustly made your position redundant, it may have failed to follow procedural requirements surrounding the redundancy of your position. Your employer is obliged to follow a process prior to making the redundancy package payment.
With over a quarter of Australian workers forced to take annual leave over the Christmas holidays when business is slow or shut down, it is critical that employees understand their rights in relation to mandated leave.
The general rule is that employers are entitled to direct employees to take annual leave where the request is reasonable. This includes situations where:
Being made redundant can be an incredibly stressful time for any employee. With all the upheaval, it can be unclear what rights you have available to you as an employee. While the process of seeing through a redundancy can be quite complex, it is important to understand what you are entitled to in order to ensure you receive what you are duly owed.
An employee has a right to procedural fairness during an investigation process into allegations raised against him/her. This means, that the employee has a right to defend themselves against allegations made against them.
In Australia, it is most common that an employer will have absolute discretion to decide whether an employee is entitled to receive a bonus or pay rise.
Unions play an important role in the workplace by representing the interests of employees during workplace disputes and acting as a bargaining representative during negotiations. However, it is unlawful for your employer to force you to join a union.
