Recent cases in labour law — March 2019

Welcome to recent cases in labour law — March 2019:

• The Federal Circuit Court of Australia (Judge Wilson) has ordered that a large multinational company reinstate a product manager that it had dismissed, having found earlier that the product manager had been dismissed because he had made complaints in relation to his employment. The Court considered, and ultimately rejected, each of the company’s six stated submissions regarding the inappropriateness of ordering reinstatement in the instant case (at [6]-[27]). The Court also helpfully set out the principles regarding the Court’s power under section 545 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) to award compensation for economic loss (at [34]) and general damages (at [42]). (Keenan v Cummins South Pacific Pty Ltd (№2) [2019] FCCA 523)
• The Federal Circuit Court of Australia (Judge Kelly) has imposed a personal penalty of $3,000 on an employer in respect of its failure to pay $450 to a backpacker the employer had employed to hand out flyers over the course of three days. The Court held that the employer’s failure to pay the backpacker his wages under the contract of employment constituted a contravention of section 323 of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (at [8]) and ordered that the penalty be paid to the Fitzroy Legal Service Inc, which acted for the backpacker pro bono (at [23]). Interestingly, Judge Kelly’s application of section 323 of the FW Act to the instant case appears to contradict a different, recent decision of the FCCA, in which Judge Manousaridis observed there to be an absence of settled authority on the relevant statutory provision (at [56]) and construed narrowly section 323 of the FW Act as imposing certain procedural, rather than substantive, obligations on employers with respect to the payment of wages (at [45] and [57]). (Murphy v Rooney [2019] FCCA 547)