28 Dec 2013

Workers win help on bullying

9:45 pm on 28 December 2013

Australians who believe they are being bullied at work will soon be able to apply to the Fair Work Commission to have the harassment stopped.

The law, an Australian first, will come into effect on 1 January 2014 as part of amendments to the Fair Work Act passed by the Federal Parliament in June.

Workers will be able to ask the commission for an order that will compel their employer to have bullying stopped, the ABC reports.

The commission will only be given 14 days to act on specific complaints - a proviso which lawyers say will improve the current "very slow" response times of current occupational health and safety watchdogs.

Aim to end bullying

Josh Bornstein, the head of employment law at the Maurice Blackburn law firm, says the new rules aim to bring workplace bullying to an end.

"For the first time, there will be a law that will allow victims of workplace bullying to seek orders from the Fair Work Commission with the ultimate aim of ensuring that the workplace bullying is brought to an end," he said.

However, the Fair Work Commission will not have the power to award compensation.

"The commission is given a pretty broad power to make orders either directed to a particular individual or directed to the employer, or both, but with the ultimate aim of ensuring that the workplace bullying is brought to an end," Mr Bornstein said.

However, business groups like the Australian Chamber of Commerce say the commission's broad powers could be problematic.

"The workplace bullying jurisdiction does give rise to a lot of complications from a business point of view," the chamber's chief executive Peter Anderson said.

"Low-level bullying acts are very much human resource and personnel issues, and taking these matters into the industrial relations tribunal you give these complaints a completely different characteristic.

"You also end up with the very serious matters being mixed in with the very low-level issues and that doesn't do justice to the serious matters."

Steve Smith, the director of workplace relations at the Australian Industry Group, shares those concerns.

"This is a very important issue, and an issue that does need more resources, but those resources in our view would have been better devoted to the occupational health and safety jurisdictions where bullying has always been dealt with," he argued.

Mr Smith also points out that the Fair Work Commission will only have 14 days to deal with a complaint. "There's a very tight timeframe for the commission to begin dealing with the complaints once one is lodged. The timeframes all along are quite tight," he said.

"No-one has any idea at the moment of how many complaints are going to be lodged after the 1st of January.

However, Mr Bornstein says it will be good to see the commission dealing with bullying complaints quickly.