The Sydney Morning Herald today reported that Justice Branson of the Federal Court of Australia had handed down a decision fining the Department of Employment & Workplace Relations $30,000 for breaching the right of its employees to use their personal leave to attend an anti-Work Choices rally:
Justice Catherine Branson ordered the department to pay the fine to the Community and Public Sector Union.
In an ironic twist to the ongoing Work Choices saga, in which the Government has spent $121 million of taxpayers’ money advertising its policy, the union said it would spend the fine on the ACTU’s anti-Work Choices TV campaign.
[...] Last month Justice Branson found the department had breached the laws it was supposed to uphold, when in November 2005 it advised other federal government agencies to deny leave applications for employees who wanted to apply for leave to attend the first ACTU national day of action against the proposed laws.
Her penalty – which is just short of the maximum fine of $33,000 allowed under the Act – confirms the seriousness of the offence and will compound the problem the Government faces defending its industrial relations laws during the election campaign. It is the second time a government department has been penalised for breaking its workplace laws.
Needless to say, Joe Hockey declined to comment.
Filed under: Law & Policy, Politics | Tagged: DEWR, federal court, Law & Policy, workchoices
