Fair Work Summit 2011 - The hot topics....
I recently attended the Fair Work Summit 2011 in Sydney, where a number of practitioners in the Human Resources and Industrial Relations arena presented on a variety of topics including Unfair Dismissals, Paid Parental leave, Good Faith Bargaining and workplace bullying.
Touching on some key points from each of these presentations it is safe to say that the Fair Work Act 2009 is not fair, and it isn't working.
Unfair Dismissal claims are on the increase, with a disturbing trend of Fair Work Australia taking into account factors such as Age of the applicant, Prior Record of service, Length of Service and Personal circumstances. This reasoning is subjective and clearly steers the decision away from being objective, thus making it almost impossible for an employer to defend. Industrial Relations practitioners who were present at the conference confirmed that recent decisions clearly indicated that although employees, in some circumstances, had breached workplace policy and engaged in unacceptable workplace practice, that FWA had taken into account these factors which had no direct connection to the incidents in question.
With some 50,000 applications for Paid Parental leave having been made, it is apparent that the Federal Government has made an overt error of judgement. Although the applicant may be entitled to the Paid Parental leave "payments", they can only access those payments is if they are on some form of "leave". Some applicants who have had their applications approved, have returned to their employer only to discover that they do not have any leave available, or not enough. This is forcing employers into situations of conflict management, and impacts on ensuring that positions within their organisations are filled, and productivity continues. The impacts of this poorly explained, poorly managed Paid Parental leave scheme has had on SME's is unmeasurable.
Good Faith bargaining was spoken about in the context of "where is the good faith?". Recent decisions have handed the Unions the ability to ballot their members, and implement strike action before any bargaining has even taken place. Unions have access to Majority Support Determinations that allow them to legislatively force the employer to bargain. The key however to defeating these determinations is implementing a robust communication strategy directly with your employees.
On day 2 of the summit, Workplace Bullying was a key topic of conversation. With the recent high media profile "Brodie" case bringing workplace bullying into the media spotlight, employers can now no longer turn a blind eye.
Experts in the field of Workplace Bullying presented a number of possible avenues which by employers can deal with workplace bullying. Mediation was also discussed, and it was clear that this is an effective avenue by which an employer can mitigate the impacts of bullying in their workplaces.
The summit was one of many held since the commencement of the Fair Work Act 2009, but it is clear that the legislation is not balanced, not fair, and unsustainable.
Your thoughts?
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