A focus on complaints by "affluent white women in elite professions", persistent workplace structures and the legal landscape might be limiting the #MeToo movement's ability to achieve broader change, but "power" is increasingly paying attention, an academic told an IR conference today.
A public servant who claims her transfer to the HR department constituted bullying and retaliation for whistleblowing has failed to convince the FWC to issue interim orders removing the financial security authority's chief people officer as her supervisor and preventing disciplinary action.
A University of Sydney lecturer sacked after superimposing a swastika on an Israeli flag in teaching materials and social media posts is relying on political opinion protections in the Fair Work Act and academic freedom clauses, claiming he was really dismissed for challenging his treatment.
The FWC has upheld the dismissal of a 63-year-old male employee who sent text messages calling a 37-year-old male colleague his "bitch" and "toy boy" and threatened to "molest" him and squeeze his testicles until it made him cry.
FWC President Iain Ross's delegate has refused to refer to the Federal Court IR Minister Kelly O'Dwyer's "revolutionary" question of law as to whether the Fair Work Act allows indirectly discriminatory terms in agreements, while also flagging potential hurdles to her quest for a review of a new fire brigade deal.
A Parmalat worker's compensation and injury manager is seeking reinstatement and maximum penalties against her former employer, alleging the dairy giant took adverse action by sacking her for repeatedly complaining to and about its national health and safety manager.
The first female secretary of SA's firefighters' union says that claims in an Equal Opportunity report that the service is a "boys club" and that the UFU is an impediment to change do not reflect the actions or priorities of the organisation's new guard nor the members that voted it in.
There is "no place for bawdy offensive alpha-male behaviour in the workplace", the FWC has found, in upholding the dismissal of a male worker for asking a female colleague for a kiss and telling another co-worker that he wanted to "f-ck" his sister.
An FWC full bench has given a mental health service volunteer another shot at applying for anti-bullying orders after quashing a finding that, because he was participating in a government-funded program to improve his wellbeing, he was not a "worker" according to the federal WHS Act.
