In our previous post celebrating the firm’s decade in Australia, our partners shared their insights into the most significant changes in employment and safety law that have affected leading employers. This post further explores our partners’ perspectives on the major changes and trends that they anticipate will have a major impact on Australian businesses in
A decade in Australia: Seyfarth’s partners reflect on changes in employment and workplace safety law
Seyfarth just celebrated ten years of service to leading employers in Australia. To mark the occasion, we invited some of our partners to share insights on the evolution of employment, industrial relations and workplace safety in Australia over the past ten years.
What have been the biggest changes in employment law, industrial relations and workplace
Closing Loopholes just keeps getting better and better
It is worth noting that under the original timetable of the Hon Tony Burke MP for the Closing Loopholes Bill, it would have been passed as law this week.
Instead, in the face of Senate scrutiny, the Bill was pushed into Committee for examination until February 2024. In the time since, fundamental problems with the
Looking to cut costs? Who you gonna call?
So, the business needs to cut costs. It might want to outsource. Redundancies look inevitable. But you need to be sure: so here comes a high-priced management consultant.
Things are getting expensive. Everything is on the table. There’s an enterprise agreement or two driving costs. You could get maintenance cheaper elsewhere. Or how about the
Closing loopholes or throwing lifelines…
This instalment of our series on the Closing Loopholes Bill considers new measures aimed squarely at union empowerment.
The Bill mandates rights for union workplace delegates that must be included in all Modern Awards and future enterprise agreements. As a minimum, these rights will be to:
- represent members and non-members who are eligible to join
Closing loopholes or creating a noose?
Anything but casual…
In the first of our series examining the Closing Loopholes Bill introduced into Parliament yesterday, we look at the new measures for casual employment.
The Orwellian title of the Closing Loopholes Bill foreshadows its intentions: casual employment is double-plus-ungood. Premised on the doublethink notion that casual employment is a bad moon on
Labor’s changes to labour strategy
Some of this is guesswork, and the extent of what’s coming is uncertain, but:
5 years on – in human resources, industrial relations and workplace health and safety law
On 12 December 2013 Seyfarth Shaw announced our Australian offices were officially open for business. Today marks five years since those doors opened.
What better way to reflect than to ask ourselves, what have been the biggest changes in our specialist areas of law over those five years?
“It has become increasingly difficult to make
Knock, knock… who’s there and do I have to let you in?
Does an employer have to let a union official in?
Only if they have a permit!
Right of entry disputes are common – partly because of the multiple laws that at a glance seem to overlap in a way that can be confusing. The latest chapter in this saga has recently played out in the
United we stand. But lawfully.
Trade union conduct is constantly changing, and our team have observed trends that are reshaping the boundaries, and that have already begun to impact our clients.
Policy Measures: increased scrutiny on trade union conduct
On the policy front, the conservative government has implemented three measures addressing unlawful behaviour by unions and their members based on the findings of former High Court Justice John Dyson Heydon AC QC in the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption in 2015.
Two key measures passed in late 2016.Continue Reading United we stand. But lawfully.